Yeah, everyone has their guilty pleasure
I sure have mine
Here’s what I want to know
At what point do they call it addiction
How much time spent alone
Ashamed
Two hours
Three
Four
8 AM to noon
Lunch to dinner
Awake past midnight
Whenever you can sneak five minutes alone
When you can’t ignore the urge anymore
When it’s all you can think about
When do they label you
Obsessive-compulsive
All of the above
How do you know
Whether or not you’re normal
When you don’t know
What normal is
WebMD can’t be all that reliable
And you can’t get a truly accurate
Google diagnosis
Or any accurate diagnosis from a
Real person
F*** credentials
Can they really say they know
Your mind
When even you
Don’t know yourself
At this point you are an
Almost
OCD
Now I don’t wash my hands
Twenty times an hour
I don’t count my steps
Or anything whatsoever
I know my sister won’t die
If I move from my chair
No, my torment is rooted
Deep beneath a quivering spot of
Raw scalp, under hundreds of follicles where my
Untrimmed nails just emerged
Smeared with blood
Clutching my fresh prize
Mere millimeters in size
Another scab to add to my collection
How insane
This is what I live for
Plain white paper provides the best contrast
Lights on full power
Eyes straining to examine
Heart thudding
Veins rushed and pumping
Fingers shaking
Need control
CONTROL
I scrape the sticky base again
Give me the pain!
Shooting through my scalp in twinges
I feel that tiny section gasping, the
Cold air hitting, I
Exhale
Turn back to the paper
Love the sound of my scabs dropping
Skittering almost like squirrels
I prolong the pleasure, I’ll do
One at a time
The first is tinged with blood, alive but dying fast
With exposure to oxygen
Surface smooth and shiny
Hard, a slice of mottled tortoise shell
Inside, soft and thick,
A chunk of me
Smelling pungently of flesh,
Sweet with capillary blood
Earthy perfume, a
Sickly shampoo
I can’t get enough
Stash it in my wooden treasure box
Lined with purple felt
Over fifty of my scabs now cling to the fuzz
Crispy
Dried
Once luscious and red, turned old
Black and brittle
I imagine their taste
Like the red pepper flakes you sprinkle on pizza
I wish I could shrink and
Become a bacterium, living in a massive head scab
Wet and sticky, oozing with blood and fluid
Weather forecast:
Moist and warm, a tropical rainforest
Smells overpowering, flooding my system
Every time I take a breath
I dig handfuls of fresh head from the walls,
Surround my body with them like sand at a beach
Soaking up the warm heat while
Rubbing the mash between my fingers
Finally feeling
Satisfied