They often say that the best art is inspired by deeply rooted pain,

That real art shall not complain about the miniscule mishaps,

The simple scrape of teeth against skin,

But rather lighting a match in a world doused with kerosene,

And allowing it to set your very being ablaze.

I’ve often heard it uttered that I’ve never experienced true pain -

Just a dull throb under a similar pseudonym,

An easy-to-relate, angel’s hair, baby’s breath-esque pain.

A sort of sickeningly sweet pain fashioned from sugar glass shards,

And while they hurt as they’re sliding down the delicate membrane of your esophagus,

Leaving nothing but screeching nerve endings that beg your body for release from their anguish,

It always somehow digests easier than real pain ought to.

When will such a deep anguish resonate throughout my bones,

A vibration that splits the surface of my body in two,

Enabling the art to spill from the same pores the crimson platelets of my blood ooze from?

When will I, if I ever, be so close to the liberation of death that my tongue becomes a paintbrush,

Eloquently clawing at my own existence until it is nothing more than coagulated black ink upon white paper?

Do I even want to be?

I could open up old wounds,

Dwell on it, exist within the brooding depression I’ve made within my own skin.

I could exacerbate my prescribed, perpetuated madness,

Analyze the cognitive functions that exist within a state of suffering.

Call me self-harmer, selfish, masochist -

I want to ache like an artist,

To feel validation for once in my meager human existence.