Toast

Its weird how a food
Can trigger uncomfortable flashbacks

Toast with grape jelly
Slams me back to the hospital
Woken up by an unfamiliar face
In a strange place
Then waking up enough to realize
I’ve been here for about a month

Girls groggily shuffle to the kitchen
Making breakfast before “school”
Toast with grape jelly
Taste explodes on my tongue
And I remember the fresh raw cuts
All over my thighs
Made with an object of circumstance
Deep as I could go with a safety pin
Kept on me all day to beg for more
Taunt me with whispers
Suffering through just to avoid room searches
Because they won’t search my body
But the small pin begs and taunts all day

A rough moment in therapy,
I slip my fingers in my pocket, brush across the steel
Glance across the hall to the bathroom
A safe haven, where no one will see
Flashbacks to the first blood in weeks
The sweet burn of ragged flesh
Drips stopped too soon
Just to join the other girls in group
Changing in the bathroom so no one will see
Rubbing my thighs in group to get the pain
Soaking in the sweet sting and dull ache

All from toast