Solace of Destruction

I slipped as I was walking down the mountain, 

I fell to the ground but the momentum of gravity grated my body on the rocky surface and I couldn’t stop. 

I tumbled and tumbled, my clothes and skin shredding against the harsh terrain

Each time I thought I was slowing the jagged rocks would give out beneath me and the grinding serration tore even more flesh from my fragile body. 

When I eventually landed upon solid ground I was nothing but pulp

The tattered threads of my skin held together like long forgotten spider web

I laid there in the silence of immobility waiting for death to take me 

But she didn’t come. 

Many days or months or years passed and I the cracks between me began to fill with course rocky tissue. 

I was more scab than not 

One day I mustered the energy to stand and was surprised to find that the scabs were holding me together 

I saw myself in a puddle and was disgusted, how could I survive with such visible wounds 

How could someone love me when I was a woman made of hardened crust 

Of clotted blood 

I dug my dirty nails beneath the edge of a bloody concretion and like a tectonic plate lifting into a mountain I began to peel it from my body. 

But it was containing my body 

And more body began to fall out as I pried it away. 

And so I left it. It took everything in me to not pick at the scabs but I knew that if I did everything in me would come loose and fall into a mess on the earth.