I sleep with a butcher knife under my pillow.

Don't all little girls?

How else can I go to sleep

knowing that sometimes

rapists break into homes

stalkers peer through windows

crazies, demons, mass murderers

walk among us.

Snakes slither

spiders  scurry.

How am I supposed to sleep? 

While I lay here

the days humiliations present themselves.

My tummy bulges

my snortling laugh that Tommy mimicked

my inadvertent innuendo about balls

the sudden sneeze that sent a tiny liquid ball across the room. 

These humiliations slip the knife out from under the pillow.

It hovers

above the middles of my arms

along the center of my throat

down my chest

into my bulging tummy.

I imagine splitting wide

seeping dark fluids into the mattress

dissolving into nothingness as I drift off to sleep. 

Then 

as a teenager 

I get pissed off

go to my room 

with a steak knife 

and rub it on my arm.  

Lightly, at first 

then harder & harder 

until delicate lines of blood appear.

I don't want to die.  

I just want to  cut myself into little pieces.  

Sweet, delicious

light as air

floating little pieces.

So light I'm hardly here

nobody sees

nobody hears

no sound, no breath

ssshhh

so thin & beautiful

quiet.