Loathsome Perfect

Laura Kerfoot

I bite my lip with relish when I remember how skin cuts so smoothly like paper onions, peeling back the layers to let the crimson stain spread so someone will notice.

Is it really a loss of humor if I lick this delicious juice straight from the vine? I don’t even have to touch my skin for it to blister: it hates itself as I do, an uneasy alliance since birth, an awkward war that rips itself at the very seams and crow feet of beginning.

I bleed with ecstasy and this maniacal grin on my loathsome face because I am different. My entrails are spread before you— because of this I win. Because, unlike you I’m not just skin and scarlet rivers and pretty curls tossed to coyly cover up flittering eyelashes.

I am ugly face and nose and brains and guts and tears and scrapes, and bruises, and sores.

There is dirt on my knees; not from bowing to you, but from the work it takes to cast aside my paper umbrella and drop the blade from my wrist to earn every inch in the ell.