Content Warning: mental health issues and mild, unconventional self harm
I step into the shower after days without sleep –
Thanks to the lovechild of anxiety and hypomania
That incessantly wails at all hours of the night.
As I step in, the water burns my skin.
Maybe if it’s hot enough, I think, I’ll get sleepy.
Maybe if it’s hot enough, I think, I’ll snap out of it.
I scrub away at the layers of my skin
With brute force someone like me shouldn’t have,
Unable to see little pieces,
But knowing they’re going down the drain
Like melting snowflakes –
Something so different than what they once were
Before they were tainted by the germ-ridden world,
Yet still in essence the same –
Still the same sick me.
Maybe if I scrub hard enough, I think, I’ll feel something else.
Maybe if I scrub hard enough, I think, I’ll snap out of it.
Maybe as the layers wash away and leave me raw,
So will some of the layers
Of this debilitating disease
And finally, for once, things will be clearer.
Maybe if it works, I’ll be understood.
Maybe if it works, I’ll be able to function.
But the water rushes down the drain,
And all the soap is gone,
And I realize that when you scrub all your layers away,
There’s no miraculous cure
And you’re just left more vulnerable
Than you were before.
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Anna Kolczynska (she/they) is a sapphic, disabled political organizer centered along the East Coast of the US. When she is not working or writing, she can be found making music or coding. As a bipolar autistic person in recovery, she has been known to say poetry has saved her. She hopes her work touches you at least half as much as her favorite works have touched her. Her work has previously been published here in Roi Fainéant Press.