braille_on_body raze tried to cut myself open again in my sleep last night. all i succeeded in doing was marking my left ring finger in such a way that it looks like someone drew a vertical line across the side of the skin with a red pen down to its final ink, writing its last bit of braille the length of a small carriage bolt. and i can't read braille, so the substance of the message brief as it is is lost on me. 131113 ... raze a different kind of message today: a small red bruise with a hollow centre, an imperfect circle between and below the first and second knuckles of my right hand. it looks like a bruise made by a small ring on someone's finger, as if they punched me in the hand when i wasn't paying attention. but there's no one here with a ring like that, and there's no pain, and the skin isn't raised where the mark was made. or it could be a stamp someone gave me in my sleep — a reminder of some place i visited, the details now faded along with the more vivid colour the stamp had when it was new. 140330 ... raze a live pen, its cap knocked off, rolled over to meet me. it slept against my side, pooled against me, and what it gave me to see when i woke was a black tattoo in three places, just beneath the right hip. for all it lost in staining my skin, the pen still writes. 140619 ... raze it happened again with a different pen, and this one too goes on writing, and this temporary tattoo has only two parts. 140807 ... gja When i was young i broke my arm; It was late summer perhaps; First there was tears; Then celebration swirled and signed around my new fitment - the cast; Then there was an unbearable itch. Knitting needles poked; Rulers sought the source. Then a biro; lid on; worked the angle. But the lid remained entombed until the great healing was complete. And then there was the biro lid again. The brand is branded on my wrist. Pity its bic. 140808 ... gja It would be too much to have hoped for Mont Blanc.Or Sheaffer. Even Pilot or Pental. But bic. Such ignominy. Ah well. 140808 ... unhinged tattoo the ink swells the skin, raises it. i dont notice until other skin is rubbed against it. maybe it is just the thrill of touch, something i dont want or experience very often. your fingers brush against my more artistic self_mutilation. i want to recoil from you, your touch as my hair stands on end. i hold my breathe. you dont read between the lines. you take it at face value, marks on skin for strangers to misread. 140808 ... raze no marks. but the pain i felt, now lost to the healing properties of sleep (though sharp enough in my memory to prove itself real and not some semblance of feeling meted out by a half-asleep mind), tells me i almost sprained my left index finger with my own body last_night, when i was only trying to meet the night on its own terms. 211004 ... e_o_i I love that part about meeting the night on its own terms. 211004 ... raze (thank you! i still want to know why my knee tried to knock my finger out of joint when i was only shifting around the way i usually do, but the knee isn't talking.) 211005 what's it to you? who go blather from