Writing

Picking at a Pimple

Created in fall 2023 for ENGL 207 (Intermediate Poetry Writing)

I’m anxious and fidgety

and so I start to absentmindedly pick at my face

I don’t even realize I’m doing it at first

and then I do

and once I do, it’s like a switch has been flipped

and I can’t not pick this pimple on my face now that I know it’s there

and I tell myself not to, because this has happened before (so, so many times)

I tell myself that picking will only make it worse

don’t pick don’t pick don’t pick

but I am so consumed with the picking

that I can’t even really hear the voice telling me to stop

and so I pick and I pick

and I pick and I pick and I pick

the whole time, hearing stop picking stop picking stop picking stop

hearing it tell me that a little picking is better than a whole lot

that just because I’ve started it doesn’t mean I have to finish it, that I can not finish it

but I can’t really hear it anymore

nothing exists to me beside this picking now

I have tunnel vision and that rational voice becomes white noise

and so I just keep on picking

knowing, knowing that as soon as I’m done and I go to the mirror to look

that there’ll be a large red welt on my face

and yet I still just can’t stop until that little, teeny, tiny, imperceptible pimple is gone

and so I pick and I pick and I pick

and I pick and I pick and I pick and I pick

and sure enough,

just like I knew there’d be,

there’s a giant bleeding wound on my face

and it would’ve been so much better had I stopped when I realized I had started

but I couldn’t

and so here I am

and undoubtedly here I’ll be again.