Bloody Mary

Bloody Mary
is trapped in my mirror
when I enter the house
she whispers my name
one
two
three times.

And I come around.

She has this way with me.
We make eye contact and I start talking
it’s so quiet, they never know there’s more than one of us in there.
We can talk for an hour
maybe more
sometimes I catch myself
tell her I really gotta get going
but she does the same thing I do
has a way with distracting goodbyes and turning them into deeper conversations.

She always does that.
And I’m always mad at myself for letting her have her way with me.

But her spells are so captivating
she loves to strip me naked with them.
Especially if I already am.
She says she likes to see what’s underneath these layers.
So I pull back my skin.
And it always starts as a strip tease.
And I’m always proud when it ends as a strip tease.

I’ll even tell them about it.
How she almost got her way with me
but didn’t
I said no this time.

I think she knows when I’m talking about her
so she calls my name again
and again
and again
and I come around.

I don’t know why I do it
that’s the thing about her
she doesn’t require explanations,
just asks that I show up and then I can quickly disappear into her world.

And I hate to admit it to them
that the strip teases are actually rare occasions.
More often than not I give her a full show.
Pull back all of the layers so she can see fresh skin
you know,
the damp kind that shrinks at the sign of oxygen
gets all tight and begs to be ripped open again, even when she hasn’t
called me back.

I’m finally talking about it though.
And I think that’s something.
A good sign.
Some may call it a cry for help
but it’s not.
See, their help turns me into sad kind of helpless.
They really try but it seems like I never do.

I make all the promises to stay away from her
but then find myself deep in conversation.

She’s really something, I say.
Hard to explain unless you hear her too.

But they don’t.
And I still don’t have the words to explain it.

I’m just tired of her making me a liar.

So I hide her behind a tapestry,
it looks like some sort of
witchcraft
bullshit.

It’s not.

Or maybe it kind of is,

but see the witch
she lives in the mirror.
And I’m
just trying to muffle her spells.

-dermatellomiana/body focused repetitive behaviors/