The Tablecloth Made of Skin

Trigger Warning: Graphic Descriptions

The tablecloth is made of my skin.

I know I haven’t been given the ability to speak, so I offer you the rest of me.

I’m barren. I have no gashes left in the open air.

I am the wound.

The entirety of my body is a bloodied mess. The remnants of my blood try to enclose the tattered nerves and bruised veins. They creep up in an unfamiliar embrace anyway. I have no blood left. The blood swallows the cold marble, below. Overlooked nerves wrap around my beaten neck. My lungs are now sucked in, devoid of any breath of air. My stomach has shrunk to look like a dried-up apricot. I bring all these useless parts that comprise me out in the brittle bones that hold up my hands. I squeeze my lungs and stomach together.

Why crush the ones already dying?

Why bleed those dry who have no blood left in the corners of their faces?

Beneath the suffocating, squirting noises, my organs don’t even try to gasp for air.

I reach for my heart now, but the ribs deny me permission to tread lightly.

So, I break open my ribs.

Crack.

I don’t bother to hold the remnants of my ribs in my blood-drained palms.

I let them fall.

I reach for my heart.

My heart slips out of my hand’s reach.

Am I not enough to understand what it really wants?

I cling onto it with my piercing nails so it can’t flee.

I grab onto it till it stops struggling.

I bring it out, observing the cuts I have inflicted on my own heart.

I squeeze it using both my hands.

Afterall, it’s harder to crack open the heart.

It’s empty.

What was the point of it all then?

You can’t find love after breaking it.

I place it on the tablecloth made of my skin.

I press my left palm over it and my right palm on top of the former.

I push.

I push, harder than ever.

Splatters of blood lick the tablecloth made of my skin.

I scoop up some of it in my fingers and devour it.

It’s bitter.

Why is it bitter?

I swallow it, in order not to be deemed impolite by those watching.

I despise the aftertaste that lingers on even when you’ve left.

It isn’t you. It never was.

It was your bloody remembrance that refused to stray.

I offer them some, but they look to my skin.

I tear a portion of the brown tablecloth that is cut in some parts— a reflection of my skin.

They take it without words of appreciation. They bite a rather large portion with a sense of urgency and swallow without a moment of hesitation.

Am I that easy to forget?

I offer more on seeing faces devoid of expression.

I must feed them till they are pleased.

How can I blame another for stealing my skin when I’m the one offering it?

I then glide a blade through the edge of my bruised neck. I hold up my drooping neck with my left palm. The blood doesn’t stop, though. It spurts through the gaps of my fingers, along my arm, and down to the cold marble floor.

I take a needle in my blood-soaked palm and stitch up the slit throat.

Why bruise your heart if you’re going to heal it anyway?

Do you want them to notice only your wretched pain?

I flinch as I pierce the tiny, overlooked needle into the skin and fight through the thick blood to bring the needle back out.

It’s always the silent who’s unnoticed and well-ignored.

After another minute of drawing the needle in and out, the neck fights to stand up, a little lopsided, towards the left.

I then reach for a spoon that slips out of my reach. After all, metal is slippery.

So is blood.

I scoop out my eyes, without flinching, until nothing remains. After collecting the sclera and the pupil, I shove the mess into my bleeding mouth. I taste the bitterness that lingers on. As I try to swallow it all, I feel it stuck towards the end of my throat. The stitches on my neck come undone. The sclera, mingled with shattered pupils slobber its way out into the open. I can taste the stringy optic nerves still stuck in my throat. Putrid vomit of crushed carrots and stale custard fire into my mouth, like a canon-ball, uninvited. I swallow it all in, forced, not by them, but by myself. The downward pressure of the vomit forces the optic nerves all the way down to my abandoned intestines.

I disjoint my head from my neck (with a forceful twist) and place it on the basin. With all the pressure within my malnourished body, I press my palm against the head of the bloodied mess till I feel the convolutions spatter against myself. I can’t see, but I scoop out parts of my crushed brain in my palm and shove it down my throat.

My throat is bloody and left to the salt-soaked air, open.

I’m a bloodied wound.

I pick up the part of my head that is still attached to a portion of my neck. I try to join it with the remnants of my body but it falls to a side unless I force it up with hands that inflicted on me the same pain.

I offer all of myself on the tablecloth made of my skin— the tablecloth that’s the entirety of me. All of my effort goes unnoticed. So, I tear another shred of my skin for you to eat.

Am I enough or would you like another inch of my abandoned skin?

Would you like my blood-soaked nerves? Or perhaps my abandoned heart that you once turned away? I do have a lot to offer. I’ll tear open my nails from my fingers only for you to devour. I’d even tear out my lips from my overlooked face, for you to consume. Is that not enough, my dear?

Let me see what else I might have to offer…