Abbie Doll
adolescent adhesion
sometimes my thighs
sometimes they
stick-to-ge-ther
like gummy worms
left in the sun
& when they’re stuck
i have no choice
but to peel them
a p a r t
—to pry them off
one another
like lovers locked
in hormonal embrace
glued to one another
skin-to-stick-y-skin
until they’ve ditched
their (vir-gin-i-ty)
the problem with persistence
i push my body until it says stop.
i push and push and push as if
life itself is nothing more
than a lifelong labor
of me giving birth
to myself.
(i have this
gnarly habit
of forgetting
I already exist.)
i push and push and push
push until everything aches
push my cells to howl
push my muscles to knot
like a preschooler puzzling
over tying their laces
for the first time
leaving my body no choice
but to rebel, to start
a revolution against
me—its infeasible tyrant
i imagine by the time i’m done
with all this feckless pushing,
i’ll have pushed myself right
off the cliff of sanity—
straight into a preemie grave
i sliced my finger on a knife &
it taught me something / boy did it ever / something…important / a lesson that is perhaps / quite obvious / / a tidbit that should have lodged itself in my brain a long, long time ago / / anyway / the story itself, is rather mundane / i was tidying up / washing the dishes / not even using the blade / but that didn’t stop it / from slipping right through / & making a fleshy den in my pinky’s cute li’l ribcage / (y’know, if fingers had chests) / gutted it like a perch freshly caught / now, now / don’t you worry yourself / despite that last bit, the wound was shallow enough / nothing was severed / (through) / & i considered myself / considerably lucky / but the blame still had to be assigned / & only to myself / the knife wasn’t the one /rushing/ & being needlessly careless / the santoku hadn’t attacked me with malice / hadn’t hurt me / (well, until now) / in fact, / it was my cherished go-to slicer / one might even say / the wound was / well overdue / / but anyway, / the incident pointed this particular nugget of truth out— / how oftentimes, / the wound itself hurts less / than the ordeal of healing / / taking well over a week / to make its repairs / / & when the steel made its incidental incision, / there was no pain / no sting / no aches, no pangs / even when the blood began to pool / isn’t that odd! / only when the body starts to close the wound / does it begin to burn / to cause any sort / of discomfort / / it’s taken me thirty years / to come to understand this / basic component / of our corporeal existence / & i’ll probably forget again / (at least, until the next reminder) / but we’re all so terrified of getting hurt / which is a fear massively misdirected / / we’ve got it backward / it’s not the hurting that hurts / it’s the healing! / the mending! / all this tiresome r-e-s-t-i-t-c-h-i-n-g!
Abbie Doll is a writer residing in Columbus, OH, with an MFA from Lindenwood University and is a fiction editor at Identity Theory. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Door Is a Jar Magazine, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, and Ellipsis Zine, among others. Connect on Twitter or Instagram @AbbieDollWrites.