Ragged Anne

Missing eye-button, unceremoniously ripped stitches, fluff pouring forth from my neck as my head lolls to the side. I know that my dress is stained with your acrid vomit, that you ripped off my delicate red locks with your crooked teeth. Yet here I lay, sagging on some neglected shelf like I did nothing for you. Like I am no longer your friend.

But I am! I’m just lying here. Waiting, waiting. Do you know what it’s like, to watch you pound into the room with flushed cheeks, moist eyes, clutching your hair in frustration as you allow gravity to yank you onto your scabbed knees? To be immobile, gazing helplessly with fixed eye as you pace back and forth in frustration, searching for the outlet, for that something that will make it all better? To see you pick up the glistening razor in the corner simply because it glimmers in the shadows, winking promiscuously so that you will choose him over me.

Him with his defined and unyielding shape, with that edge. An edge that tears at the stitches that hold you together, that liberates not fluff like mine, but that drippy, crimson goo which surges through upon the first neat slice and stains the sheets, the clothes, the soul. Oh, Sweetie, what I would do to endure the razor’s wrath for you! To have you, in all your convoluted agony, take the razor to me.

There you would be, writhing on the filmy floor, gathering dust upon your young body, dirt sticking to your salted wet face like glue. You would dig your nails into the wooden floor, thrusting splinters up your fingertips as your teeth grind in utter frustration. And you will see the multiple stitches in your arms—more than all of mine combined—and you’ll realize that you’ve had enough. Your eyes will focus on him, the glistener, as light dances upon his refulgent surface in all his malicious glory, and then you will see me, broken in the background, ready to leave the murky shadows for the sake of your poor arms, for fear that one day you will be irreparable.

And I will take every slash you lend to me, savor the sound of crisply ripping fabric, the feel of torn stitches. I will taste your tears as I soak them into my flesh, take your invigorated gashes with the utmost pleasure. Perhaps I will even bleed for you.

Finish the mutilation that you started as a child. Allow me to be your friend again. Allow me to bleed for you.