You Were Worth It
By Fiza Pathan
Violent have I become towards myself
ever since you have married my best friend.
I work like a maniac from dawn till twilight
and then I keep up at night, not to ponder over
the stars that shine to guide our path,
─but to cry a few tear drops to water my room
with the freshness of your treachery.
Then dear old lover
I whip myself with a belt
to bruise the flesh
to open up its redness to my sorrow.
I smoke a cigarette and take the ends of the bud
to burn my hands and legs to remember
the searing pain of burning love long lost.
With the scissors I clip at my skin ─ bit by bit
the blades of twin snip off my skin
to draw up a dozen blood clots
to remind me that you no longer
long to touch me anymore.
Then my expressions turns fatal to my body
and in the dead hour of the night,
I grab a knife to haunt my body with its cold touch.
I first beat my flesh up to make
the blood flow upon the surface in puzzlement,
just the way I was puzzled when you left my hand.
I then pierce my flesh and cut myself with pleasure
and when I see the blood so red flowing out
dripping onto the carpet making it
soak up my life supporting system
─I am in painful ecstasy.
I cut my arms and my legs and my hands and my feet
till I am a blood bath of self-mortification
and I enjoy the smell of the blood
that decorates my tanned complexion outwards.
You would think dear old lover I would stop there
but no dearest, your illness within me
burns like a fire unquenchable
to the tools of practicality.
After I have slain myself
to the horror of all men,
I drop the knife and take up
my ancestral dagger.
I raise it to my chest and facing the looking-glass
slowly I carve out your revered name
with the dagger of my forefathers
to give you homage for inscribing
your memory upon my bleeding heart.
Mad they say I am
──insanity personified they say I am
“but one must not take away what one cannot return”
this is the law of Chekhov.
Yet you dearest old lover
took yourself away from me
and did not return one in your place
──for the misdeed that you have done to me
I tremble myself with the loss of holy blood.
You have forgotten me and moved
on with your life; this also I am aware of.
But darling of my soul
beware the ghost of my elementals
that will haunt you everyday of your life
asking you for a replacement of the treasure
within my heart, which you took away from me.
I don’t know my worth,
I only know of one truth,
that all these violent acts
that I have done upon myself,
I’ve done it, for you were worth the gashes
though you think me to be worthless.
Copyright © 2014 by Fiza Pathan
Image courtesy: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/216612
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