At dinner parties, my parents still laugh
and tell their friends about how
I used to bite my toenails as a child– as if
it is cute that my fingernails and cuticles constantly
resembled a war zone. As if
the fact that a four year old had enough anxiety
to resort to biting her toenails
once her fingernails ran out, was funny.  

Five thousand eight hundred and forty three days later,
the skin around my thumbs has learned how to heal
when it is uprooted from it’s home.
Five thousand eight hundred and forty three days later
and I’m sitting in this chair, small flakes of my skin accumulating
on my thigh. I try and hide them,
brush them off onto the floor.
Five thousand eight hundred and forty three days later
and she asks, Why
do you pick your thumbs?
and I think: To feel something. 

Because bloody thumbs
are a lot easier to brush off
than the scars on your inner arms.
Because you can pick your thumbs
without having to discretely pack
blades and gauze pads and tape and bandages
in your backpack.
Because you don’t have to hide
in a bathroom stall between classes
just to feel something. 

Some days the anxiety
is so bad my fingerprint
reader on my phone cannot read
my thumbs.
Some days my fingers are so raw
I cannot hold
my pencil without cringing. 
Some days my fingers look
like they’re wearing bugle hats. 
Some days my nail beds are
a war zone. 

I’m picking at myself to feel something
because being numb isn’t enough to prove I’m alive.