I scrub.
I scrub with soap and water
at my skin.
Skin that is covered
in thin lines of ink.
Blue and black ink that
would have no meaning
if I didn’t give it any.
Ink lines that
twist and turn,
that curve around my arms
and smudge on the soles of my feet.

I scrub.
I scrub with wrinkled hands
and ragged sponges.
Sponges stained from so many times
of scrubbing thin lines of ink.
Ink that only seems to soak deeper
into my red-raw skin
until it burns with truth.
Ink lines that are thickening,
that are starting to cut and bleed
onto my cotton-white dress.

I scrub.
I scrub with chipped fingernails
at the lines now engraved
into my flesh.
Flesh bruised and scarred
from scratching, scraping, clawing, cutting,
until curses drip from my own pointed tongue,
pouring into the sores
soaking them ever deeper
into my tissue, muscles, bones, nerves;
a disease I cannot scour away,
for it has become my existence.

I scrub.
I scrub with an aching body and mind
at the floor tiles.
Tiles stained with blood
from the lines, from my being.
I am infected, I am the infector.
I stain as I have been stained,
with pens and tongue and gnarled fingers,
retracing bloodied lines I can no longer separate
from the blood that coats the tiles, the drain, my skin.
But still,
I rub,
I cleanse,
I erase,

I scrub.