Title: Bleed
Fandom: original
Rating: Mature
Length: 150 words, 30 lines
Content notes: self-harm
Author notes: On the origin of this metaphor.
Summary: "You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed."

as I dance on the knife's edge
between drama and melodrama
between familiar and overdone

the thought occasionally flutters by
of that metaphoric knife
turned literal
that Red Smith witticism
turned sharp truth

like blood from a stone,
they say,
they who do not write
like blood gushing from a vein

better safer
less painful
to keep blood inside skin
where it belongs

but at the same time
it hurts to keep it in
to let injuries heal in silence
(if heal they can
in silence)
to let the unthinkable
remain unthought
unspoken

put down the knife
take up the pen
write with ink the hue of blood
on double-spaced manuscripts
typewritten in pulse-beat gushes

in the end it's all the same

except that words can heal a heart
as well as break it
and knives, save only surgeons',
never can