Red/White

or
A Portrait of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Bloody lips,
the skin torn clean off,
layers of fine white ash in my wake.
The cracks in my flesh like seams
barely reining in the fire-fueled flood
of blood underneath.
Red speckling white tissue paper
unwieldily clotting the wound,
raw and pulpy and hot.
Overnight the blood turns black
and stale, turned hard from harder air
and I look a victim of a lost battle.
I am not abused,
attacked, or battered by another.
My fight is not with any sanguinary
heart pumping sadistic blood.
Instead I am in combat with my
mind, who commands my nimble fingers
to tear at my mouth without mercy.
In times of any stress or strife
my heart rattles against its brittle cage
and pounds its scarlet ichor through
my tattered lips, while the pain is but
white noise, as trifling as the shafts of
skin, the only remnants of a silent war.