Relapse by Trisha Dutta (17, India)

[Content warning: self harm, pills, blades, suicidal thoughts]

I’ve been like myself for some time now, so long that mom thinks I’ve been cured
and maybe I’m just faking it again, like they say
I don’t remember when it began,
but I know I heard them whispering
and I know they sharpened their gilded onyx daggers, glittering in the shadows
and I remember now, that unbearable agony painkillers won’t do away with
I’ve tried trust me
to hurt and heal and die

---

I can’t be the pagan of good times that Hozier talked about nor one of Byron’s or Shelly’s
more like a Van Gogh, the scream dipped in yellow paint
​
And now it’s just more pills down the toilet and flimsy blades underneath pillows
It’s midnight breakdowns and bruised knuckles from punching the monsters
blood, gore, battle scars 
One foot after the other, 
left, right, left, right, smile, speak, love, cry, die, Scar
 
Three months to the follow up, been a year and the prescriptions say I’m doing better 
And maybe they will up the dosage again, some more pills, some more cash to splurge,
Maybe the monsters are fake too
Like the pain the obsidian shards
Like the thousand scars on my beige tinted skin

one for my first love, 
two for the school bully
three, four, five, six and a hundred 
For the hurt, the betrayal, the agony
and for me

There are monsters in the mirrors now,
Their voices scream at me in broad daylight
and the ruby eyed vultures are looking for me again
and the curtains still refuse to fall

Maybe it’s just the heaven for the sinners
harps and angels and golden goblets
and skulls and fractured bones and the hemlock
For it is just you and me now
underneath my aching scathed skin
shivering in frenzied passion
for you named the stars after me,
but my demons named their forever.