Destructive little rituals.

It is today that I put my name to them,

those destructive little rituals.

Today that I baptize them in a dry and sable font,

so they can no longer live

where they so comfortably did,

in a realm of blissful blindness.

It is today that I carve a score along my sternum

and claw apart my rigid cage

so the world can watch as my heart beats

in bespattered blackened figures

pouring out in tears and heavy, weighted breaths,

then, so suddenly retracted.

Choked down in gulps and gasps,

as I bare myself to people of my present and of my past

those whom I do not know,

and yet I care enough

to let it gnaw as I bestow

an admission of my unvarnished self.

A freak of blood and bone.

Author note - I wrote this poem the day I declared to the world what my poems are about. Publicly acknowledging my OCD was not an easy thing for me to do, yet it has been somewhat therapeutic. This is what my poetry has been for me, a way of working through the challenges of my everyday life with the hope of gaining some understanding from them.