Stains

By: Shafaq Batool

Try taking paint. Cover your hands and mark your body. Everywhere. 

It's not too bad, right? You won't notice it at first, especially if you don't remember being painted like you were some else's canvas. 

You can go months not realizing they're there. You can go years. But you will start to notice. You'll start to notice how they trail over vour body. In places that are mostly always covered anyway. 

But those clothes aren't enough. You try wearing more. Layer overtop layer. Pull your coat over your shoulders. Make sure no inch of your skin is bare if you can avoid it. 

But it's never enough. So you try washing them off. Try scrubbing them out of your skin until it's red and blistered. But they will always reappear when you remember them. Try hiding them in scents. 

But it won't ever be enough. So, you'll take a different route. Try to hide them in filth. Make sure you don't shower, the layers of grimy stenches can perhaps overpower what you're trying so desperately to hide. 

But that won't work either. You wash the dirt away eventually. Your skin will be freshly cleaned. Try standing without clothes in front of a mirror staring at the trails of stains that are embedded in your skin. No one can see them. But you can. 

The razor blade will start getting tempting. Maybe you can cut it off. But sometimes cowardice holds vou back. You can't bear to try to cut it off. Even if seeing those scars can mabe help vou understand why it hurts so much, you're too much a coward to do that. What happens if you start bleeding, and people notice? That's exactly what you're trying to avoid. 

Try covering those stains with your lies. With a more tangible hurt. Explain where it hurts with a better why. But no matter how you try to explain away the pain, you'll always feel those permanent stains on a surface that you can't separate from yourself. 

How do you explain that pain? How do you write it down with a mere 26 letters? Explain what happened. Go on. Write down what happened in your short miserable life that has held you back so much. The one that closes around your throat, wasting away your voice with every minute you choose to hide it. 

How do you tell someone that you blame yourself for those stains, because they're here on your body? Because it's been too long to catch the vandalist who took your body to their will. 

How will you explain to anyone who gets close enough, that you couldn't be near them because you can't comprehend being touched as something else rather than being hurt? Because you can't tell how it feels like to be touched, those stains are so persistent in holding your soul captive in the past. 

Those exact stains that take a lifetime or two to even fade.