In every cabinet above or below the bathroom sink. Every first-aid kit. Every school nurses hands after you fall over. Every parent’s. Every teacher’s. Every coach’s. When you cut, bruise, scratch, scrape or fall. The answer is as simple as a bandaid. It always works for everyone. It's the right thing to do.
I’m the best at bandaids.
Not a drop of blood will fall off me. Not a single bacteria will infect me. How fun is that? Patch, stick, pin them on, and rip, tear, pull them off. The first time’s an accidental jackpot, the second’s an indulgence and the third time is only the beginning.
Look how safe I am. Oh so precautious. Prepared for anything. Wrappers on the floor, adhesive on the counters, nothing wrong here. Package after box, day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day
I’ll always wear bandaids. I like bandaids. I'm safe. That's who I am.
I’ll make sure everyone sees and knows I know my wounds and injuries should be covered. See how I cover my mistakes? How I right my wrongs?
In the window of every pharmacy. In every doctor’s office. Band Aid, bandage, back again. Not once, is what I do a bad thing.
The boxes stack up in my closet. The sticky residual adhesive covers everything. My hair gets stuck to my pillow at night, and I rip it off when I rise in the morning after another restless night. My pens and pencils lay stuck to my desk, but it's not really an issue since my sketchbook is stuck in my drawer anyways. Noone can see this. All they notice is the bandaids. I guess its my fault for never letting anyone in my room anyways.
My fingertips peel, so I peel more bandaids to cover the blood under my fingernails. Into the bloody mix goes cardboard scraps and wrapper slithers, my fingers going stiff by the day. It's harder, but I’ll never stop wearing band aids. I’m just so good at it after all. I will never give up. I’ll always have more to cover up. There’s blood on my hands now after all.
Slip after peel after package after box, I cover my whole body.
Always use bandaids to prevent infection, says the free care package from the doctors office.
I dive into the free stationary package I got today. I reach for the nicest looking pen, flinching back when my grip strains my hand under all the band aids and it hurts. I can hold it, but still nothing appears in my sketchbook: nothing appears in my head aside from the sensation of bandaids on my body.
I can’t see - all I can do is feel. The bandaids weigh down my eyelids. I go to the bathroom sink to wash them off, but I’m just surrounded by bandaids. Each box shows the pain of infections.
When have I ever even gotten an infection? Can’t I just worry about the problem when it happens? Why do I even need band aids?
I cry to sleep that night, knowing all the morning has in store for me is tearing my hair off my head and pillow. I throw out box after box, but only time will melt away all the adhesive I’m buried under.
I walk through the medical aisle and I walk past the pharmacy on my way home. Bandaids and feelings haunt my skin, but my sight is free from the weight of bandaging. My shredded, rashy skin slowly peels off. I shed a sickly cocoon of layers upon layers in a husky metamorphosis that's probably just gross to anyone else noticing.
You could tell me using bandaids could open my third eye and I wouldn’t bat an eye, but I’m never using another one. It doesn’t bother me no one understands the pain of adhesive or knows anything past the bandaids on my body. I know noone else thinks I should have a pen instead of a bandaid. I know my layers of skin may just be gross to everyone else one day. I could always be ripping off more bandaids.
But I want to open my sketchbook and hold a pen instead.