Leland Quarterly | Winter 2021
Dermatillomania
Via Lamberti I. When we moved in, my parents thought the tree in our backyard was dead or dying; its peeling bark evoked an ear of corn not quite shucked, a natural edge run ragged. We would soon learn that the shagbark hickory is not born with shag in its bark; but grows into it. It is the story of age as paring knife, bark as shed skin. II. I let my first whitehead ripen until my mother snipped pus fruit off the vine with flesh between pinched fingers, a pop. This is how rite became passage of time, and how I could not help but pick and poke and prod and pop each bump, raze what was raised into submission, into scar.
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