I wrote this when the weather was warmer. I wrote this because Katie told me to.

Projects

Today I thought about ripping my face off; taking a straight razor and tracing a fine line around its circumference. I’d hook my fingertips around the inside flap of skin and peel. I imagine that my eyes would come out too. It is logical to assume they could stay, nestled in their sockets without the pervasive obstructions of eyelids or lashes, or my nose. My nose would come off too, probably.



If you were wondering why I’d think about ripping my face off I’d tell you to wonder, “Why not?” I can’t think of anything else that would satisfy this new urge to shed my skin and trade it in for something that exposes my nerves, make me feel raw, naked in the worst way. I want to let the freezing air of this fucking desert ignite my nerve endings and chill my wobbly bones. Maybe it’ll make me more resilient. I’ve just been hiding behind this face anyway. Making the same one for years and years and years of lost loves and lost strangers who would have ended up in that previous category eventually.


If I had no face I would worry about it constantly. I’d wonder what people thought if they thought of me. A bloody mess of honest tissue held together with those tiny fibers we never see. I’d stay hidden behind dusty blinds. I’d turn the music up to the highest volume. I’d sing along to the cries of burdened musicians. I’d imagine all the similarities between us. I wouldn’t have to worry about that wedding tomorrow, or the start of my life without structure, or the distance between me and my sanity, or the man who might have loved me if I’d met him before that other girl he’s probably loving, or the boy who cares about me so much he hurts me for my own good, or the lemon fresh prison I’m too poor to escape from.


If I had no face it’d be a lot harder to hide, but easier to find a reason. That’s all I ever wanted in the first place. A reason to: hide, or hurt, or scream, or crawl out of my skin, or try on a new face for a while. A reason other than ‘this is life’, and things happen, and it’s not luck, or God, or me, or you, or him, or her. It’s just what happens. Because it happens. And we all have to deal with it, whatever that means. I’ve never been one for ambiguities.