“Bone Crush” by Ella Erickson

When nights as heavy as this one
seep into the rips of my skin,
I don’t know what to do with myself
or make of this mess I’ve found myself in.

I imagine stuffing my pain into a pot and boiling it;
melting my ache into something digestible and temporary.
I long to swing an axe against my suffering
and peel back my hurt—stripping it bare of its bodily disguise.
Ripping off my damage like tree bark
and slaughtering the girl I was for every age I’ve been.
I’m bitter and bleeding and remorseless in my mourning.
Before the sun has risen, I am solemnly staring
at last night’s dinner, ruined and swirling.

As I shuffle through my piles of expired beliefs,
smoke twists knots in the muscles in my heart.
I smell the ashes as I watch my reasons burn.
Trembling, I envy the warmth and familiarity of the embers.
These flames have caressed my face more times than my mother.

I stuff the rag deeper into the mouth of my sadness.
I twist off my braids angrily, obsessed with my own agony.
I gnaw on my gums. I make a friend out of this abandonment.
I have been beaten bloody by my vulnerabilities.
Gravely, I pray for a beautiful ending.

My instincts are those of an old shelter dog—
wise enough to know the end is near,
but too sick to run and too weak to care.
I blur into my blankets as I sweat through my sheets.
I’ve lost every war I’ve started. I’ve written lifetimes of eulogies.
Slowly, my loathing erodes my bones into coal—
a stupid girl I was born, and an exiled bitch I will go.

Still, the gold begins to rust and the birds begin to drop.
My heart has been maimed, irreversibly so,
and I swear to smolder my forgiveness
and spread its ashes in every corner of this world.
Paint drips off my face as tears trail from my eyes.
I am tired of turning my pain into prose.
I am exhausted from turning my blood into wine.

I remain lost in my own labyrinthine,
croaking out broken hymns to the bleary air.
Time is thick and sickly sweet like jam.
I was swallowed by the earth and spit out by man.

There is no meaning to unearth underneath my misery.
I am a rotten seed drowning in dirt; paradoxically suffocating.
I peel off my lips as I swear to bury this feeling—
me and my everlasting, insurmountable grieving.
Now I’m sinking in snow, weeping over dead traditions.
The fall was painless; the bone crush isn’t.