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|By Request|
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the “cutting girls”

Cutter Girls

Shivered blood
On the porcelain
This time.
Still red of crimson
But no smearing –
No drying.

Last time it was the bed sheets
And before that the couch,
The warmth of the feeling;
Still bleeding from the mouth.

The blade brings the power
Back into her hands –
While trying to relinquish memories
Of the wrongs on midnight sands.

Trying to overcome
And failing all the same;
They reach out for hope
They reach past the paint.

The surface still stained
The next day rises.
Bleeding of heart
Still on the floor from night’s end.

Outreached,
Arms flailed for loss of breath –
Half alive
With blood, now cold,
Against her supple breast.

“Just a little help,”
Is all that’s said is needed,
But a friend must hold their hands
And remove them from the bleeded.

I can’t justify the power
That is derived from one’s hand.
I, myself, feel no power
And thus may never understand.

What I do know
Is that their lives are precious –
And their loves must be as well,
To stifle further cutting of the flesh.

No fairytale here,
Their story is true;
They’ve just wanted to share their feelings
And enlighten us too.

The girls, they still cut,
But not as much as before –
They’re trying to hand over the power
To the God waiting at the door.

©2003 Joe Jenkins