I Tore Myself to Pieces


Some people delicately peel themselves with the tips of their fingers.
First the skin clean off the muscles
Like an onion
Like a stripper
Then the veins and arteries one by one...licorice like
Others may cut themselves with gourmet intentions
Carved into chops and fillets
Using expensive silver sharp knives of only the finest quality
Put away into freezers and kept only for special occasions
But with my own self there were no tools needed
(or grace for that matter)
At the end of it, my skin was blood drowned
Sheeted twice from the throat of the soul's heart
(that far down and precise in anatomy)
Somehow (as it is still a mystery to me) on my own
I ripped myself into a million different pieces with my own two hands
Each limb from the socket went POP
A wet, sucking noise it made as flesh pulled away
and stretched like taffy and then broke like weak hair
And my parts lay all over
My head here
A breast there
(with nipple dangling on nerve like fish bait
and a small drop of newborn milk pushing itself out of the womb
waiting for gravity to come and lap it up)
Cracked my legs open like a wishbone
My cunt was wider than it had ever been
(which truth be told was pretty damn wide to begin with...Moses parting the sea and all)
One arm sans hand flopped like a fish fresh out of water
Now I am many different sizes and shapes and gobs and blobs
But I do not know if I like it
I feel freedom yes being emptied of my organs and fluids and scattered about
A relief if you will
Poisoned pressure escapes
The red balloon slowly releases air and flutters to the ground making a pillowed sigh of an exhale
The eyes in my severed (but complete) head gather up my handy-work like wild flowers
Everything is askew
I can feel grey matter leaking through the hole in my neck
Just a little bit
The rest is brain fluid
A cocktail of water, neuroglia, prolactin, corticotropin, serotonin and synapses
I see one finger of mine on a frayed torn hand and it is giving me the bird
Can you believe it?
After all of this and still I have the power to kick my self
I thought I would at least gain some self respect for being so brave as to rip myself to pieces
Remember the witches and heretics who never gave away the names?
Isn't that me? Right now? Fuck this
I’m sewing my self back together with a special needle and thread my Aunt Olympia used
To fashion my prom dresses
Needle = Thread =
(Well you fill in the blank spaces...the metaphors...the symbols.
I am too tired to think of something clever for you.
Just tore myself to pieces after all. You understand.
I have my own theories as I am sure you have yours.)
It was difficult at first
No rigor mortis though thank goodness!
My hands crawled about and found the arms
and the arms found the torso
and then the legs and breasts and some toes
and fingers that I had fun plucking like rose-head petals
He loves me.
He loves me not.
I rebuilt myself from the bottom up like slow and backward celluloid
I look really weird though
I am not the same. Grotesque
But I am whole again and I feel a little looser
I can bend in many different ways. I am pliable.
Yes pliable like a palm tree in a hurricane. No, not that.
Pliable like a flag in the wind. No wait there is something better coming...
Like my mother's scent which could sneak into the tiniest places
And I am scarred. Deeply scarred.
Deep blue and red ragged, jagged scars all over my body
If I lift my shirt, you would think me a road atlas in the Northeast
I could show you how to get to New York (any burrough) or Boston or Portland or Hartford.
(You are here at the bellybutton)
And now after I am together again
I rest leaning against a door ajar
(which I think used to be locked if I am not mistaken)
An old rag doll I am that you find in grandma's closet
The one that was torn to pieces by the black dog with one eye
The one with epilepsy who, bless his heart, had no idea that he was doing something violent
He had a grand mal afterwards
I am that epileptic dog eaten, rag doll grandma held when she was feeling wrong
The one that was wet and soaked with tears
Now only the salt remains behind
I lick my hand and taste it. I taste Grandma
Soon I will be able to walk again. And talk again. And love again. And smile again
And shake hands with people I hardly know again
But looser...lubricated...more able to let the wave wash over
Now though my head hangs low as I rest against this door ajar
(once it was definitely locked, I have just recalled)
and wait for Bluebeard's wife to enter.

© Rachel Lisi 2003