DRAWING THE LINE

I trace the outline,
purple on flesh.

Hands shaky, needle ready to puncture,
penetrate up and down,
injecting at a rate of one hundred vibrations per minute
through epidermis to dermis,
from my mind to the paper.
Contract, then ease.

Steady, steady
That’s it.

I wait for the right minute, word, syllable.
Shallow grooves of an outline forms.
Sometimes wings of an eagle emerge,
cinnaquins and sestinas.
Other times the Tasmanian devil,
with poorly constructed sentences and overused metaphors.

After five lines or so I no longer exist.
It’s pen against paper, needle on skin.

Some are black and white, others stencils of color:
voodoo orange, star glow blue, Venetian brown,
four different shades of red alone -
Devil’s red, dragon red, Spanish red and scarlet red
I overlap each line of verse to ensure solid, even hues.
I don’t miss one section of skin.

I run my fingers over the puncture wound words,
the lines elevated, like reading Braille.

What you see on the page
is the ink that’s left in the skin
after I bleed.