Years ago, I had worked part time in the OHSU library to make some extra money while I was a student at PSU. My job was to photocopy old medical articles, and then electronically scan them into a computer, and then send the article to the students. My favorite was the old library with the quiet dark shelves, and isles, and the antiquated medical journals. The articles would fascinate me especially the psychology journals. Often after I copied the articles I would stuff them into my book bag and take them home. I had hundred and hundred’s of stacks of journal articles. I eventually had to throw them out, I had too many. I was morbidly drawn to the psychological articles on self-mutilation and suicide. At the time it was my own way with dealing with depression and trying to understand the tick behind my old scares barely hidden on the insides of my arms, and inner thighs created years earlier. That was five or six years ago, and the articles are long gone, as is my fascination and my need for that type of healing. I recently came across a journal where I had cut and pasted bits from those articles onto the pages, I believe I was working on some kind of project. As I flipped through the bits I read about a 48 year old woman, who was psychiatrically depresses, guilt-ridden and a widow, who had enucleated her own eyes, meaning she removed them from her skull. In all my tragic falls and periods of cutting, I had never come near to anything so graphic and damaging, or intense. self-mutilation is intense as it is and it is fueled by deep misunderstood pains, but to remove your own eyes, is beyond my comprehension. Her pain had to have been so sever for her to hurt herself that badly.
She said, Good-night
“always, night and day, was crying and cutting himself with stones.” (Mark 5:5)
She enucleated her eyes,
both of them,
removed them from
her sockets.
They were a burden,
her eyes,
showing her what
she could not have.
It was impulsive,
she would admit,
it was for the pain.
She could look
inward and there was no reason
to see.
Knives and razors no
longer eased the
sadness, no longer
took the control,
she needed a new pain,
physical, permanent,
death-like.
Poking,
the tip of her
forefinger,
cold like an
ice pick,
pressed against
a bruising eye,
soft at first,
then more,
and more,
till it pulsed
and the jelly shivered,
blue and white
gelatin, quivering in a
purple throb.
One eye pulsing,
rivers of bumps and
curves under her lid
then two eyes throbbing
rivers of curves and bumps
under her lid.
The cords snapped
popped and cracked
like rice crispies
in milk.
Goo gushed
like fountains
for children to dance
and like gum drops
one
two
they fell to the floor
hitting the freshly
polished
wooden ground, seconds, before
her skull.
A Chatoyant Fleck 