My childhood bleeds through me like dark ink on cheap paper. Long ago
someone put their pen to the page and started writing a person,
  pressing down hard into the skin canvas,     writing a story. A needle
drags its way through, binding these pages together, threaded with blood
and ink               and blood. I am nothing but an imaginary girl,
made up as an object of desire. I am nothing

     if not small and laced with stillness. The bleeding puncture that spells
out a name. The blemished skin. The hidden parts. The blisters still covered
with bandaids and secrets, buried with the memory. Every day it rears its ugly
head and I shush the thing to silence and push it back under the covers where
it can learn to be afraid and quiet.