Sit
and place your hands somewhere you cannot reach.
Breathe
just like each day you've lived and breathed before.
Feel
the tension building up within your spine.
Try
to fill your shaking hands with something new.
Fail
to keep your brittle, breaking will in check.
Run
your fingers through the graveyard on your head.
Fight
the urge that wants to pull you to the edge.
Lose
yourself in treacle truths and bitter tastes.
One.
You find that bare and balding patch of skin.
Ten.
Each pluck removes a tiny piece of sin.
Thirty.
The pain reminds your mind that you're alive.
Forty.
The shame reminds your heart you want to die.
Fifty.
Demonic hungers spur your fingers more.
Sixty.
And hair by hair you carpet wooden floors.
Eighty.
You picture faces of the ones you love.
Ninety.
Your innocence lives like a dying dove.
Hairs
in hundreds lie around your pillowcase,
around, not on, your sore and bleeding scalp.
Each time you vow to never pick again,
but Trich plays tricks and makes you take his help.
This poem is about my hair condition Trichotillomania (pronounced trick-o-till-o-may-nee-ah). Whilst I do sometimes pull subconsciously, most of the time it is an extremely compulsive urge, which is what this poem addresses.
Here is a link to give you more information on the condition: http://www.trichotillomania.co.uk/about_trichotillomania/diagnosis.htm