Cutting Poem by Souren Mondal

I

You think that I am an Emo guy
with seventeen tattoos on my body
and an association with some cult
that performs weird rituals
and summons Satan for a supernatural
rendevous

I wear only black and
listen to indie bands
that no one has ever heard the name of,

and for you it's just a fetish of mine - to
cut - take a razor and cut my body's
skin here and there to let out some
blood -

For you,
It's a way for me to be cool,
To be a non-confirmist - live outside
the boundaries of the social circle that
YOU NORMAL people make

You call yourselves normal,
as if You and I have so many differences

But do you not, like me, have same
organs - like the heart - that pumps
blood in our bodies - us - humans.

I cut and you don't - that's
why you are normal folks and I am
abnormal



But do you ever dare to stare long into my
eyes
and find the deep, dark abyss
of pain and scars that I am?

II

You think that I might have been
raped, had an abortion, or had
done something that good girls don't

since you saw the Ambulance rush
with me in it at three in the morning

or night or whatever -

And you are Goddamned angry on me
for ruining your good night's sleep
while I had been an insomniac for
four years.

I always wear full sleeve shirts and
Tees,
even when the lead hits forty,

I do it to hide my scars - the ones
that I have all over my body - not
only my wrists...

You think that I'm weird, a freak,
since I have no friends and never talk or
smile, yet wear a lot of kajal
and always keep my head low...

What you don't know that there are
nights when my blood feels like
boiling lead melting my veins and
burning my heart -

I feel like a monster - a masochist,
some of you educated folks might say -

and at those times I cut
to let that boiling lead mixed up with
ridiculous substances run out of
my body,

To purge myself.

Yes,
I'm a screwed up lunatic as
you say,
But there's no moon in my life
that can lighten up the dark hole
that I live in,

The dark hole that I am...

III

We are the cutters,
We cut ourselves to harm us,
Because it's in harm that we find
relief

A moment of tremendous pain and
a threat to our lives - a risk, a rush, adrenaline,
The compulsive action worth taking,

again and again.


And although like Sisyphus it takes us
nowhere it somehow gives us a few moment
to breathe in the fresh red air of life,
while for the rest

Our life's each moment is toiled
away fighting with a predator that's inside
Us -

We are the predator -
We are its prey -
We are Pain, Agony, Struggle for Existence in camouflage
Personified

There's no happiness in our lives,
but no sadness either,
We are a strange ocean, with a stagnant
surface
and a whirlpool inside...

There are no mermaids in there,
Only a creature that is a crossbreed
Between a sea horse and a wild hyena,

You'll never be strong enough to hold that creature in yourself like we do...

We don't need your sympathy,
We certainly don't need your judgement

All we need is love, acceptance, compassion
and empathy -

That's all we need,
If not that, give us nothing.