Poetry by Erica Abbott

             Winkye Cheong CC



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How Close I Came to Breaking

As a child, my Saturday evenings 

were spent trying not to break 

the ice. They say we are all born

from stars but I imagine the skies 

must have been empty the night 

I was created. The paper cut on my palm 

line still itches from failing to fall 

in love without holding my breath; 

never shouting of my infiniteness 

as the car sped down Route 322. //

Mental illness has been my most 

consistent friend and everyone else 

is trying to get rid of it. Fires can burn 

underwater. My blood is trying 

to extinguish me. The Earth pulses 

deep within its core. An orchestra’s 

crescendo always makes me weep. 

Outlining my life has been the roadmap 

to my survival. Gushing red rivers 

once threatened to replace saltwater seas. 

A tissue can only hold so many marbles. 

I wonder how many people know 

just how close I came                 to the breaking point?
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I Look at the Scabs On My Arms

and scratch them into scars. I’m itching

for some semblance of sanity while my mind swirls
and they stain the surface of my skin with each frenzied opening.

It has been this way since the tides first turned, since the world
closed down and old wounds suddenly took on new meanings--

try to pick at something—flowers, apples, words—anything
more beautiful than what can only ever be seen underneath

this bleeding shell. Salty beach air tries to sting me into something 
more than endless hauntedness again—an unnumbing. I sink 

my nails into my own tidepools of iron. It foams along the cracking 
shoreline until the crumpled mass spills into a metallic-

scented slick like oil in the middle of an ocean. Their surface layers 
are peeled away one tiny circle at a time. Can I can stop

reopening the hole-punched trauma, until the skin grows back sandy 
white in the spaces my body has forgotten its own olive complexion?

I look at the scabs on my arms 

                                                             and apologize for turning them into scars.
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Erica Abbott (she/her) is a Philadelphia-based poet and writer. She has been writing for over 15 years and her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Toho, perhappened, Bandit Fiction, and other journals. She is the author of Self-Portrait as a Sinking Ship (Toho 2020), her debut poetry chapbook. She volunteers for Button Poetry and Mad Poets Society. Follow her on Instagram @poetry_erica and on Twitter @erica_abbott.

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