Under Your Skin

• Teneille Fanning, Grade 10
• Poetry
• 2009

Your veins were like spider webs beneath my fingers
And blue like someone had frozen them, frozen your heart
I remember, I’d trace them up your arm until they vanished beneath your skin
I used to ask that a lot, what gets under your skin? You’d always reply, Life.
Like it really didn’t get under your skin. Like it never broke the surface.
But life did break the surface. It broke the surface like it broke your bones.
Because that’s what life does I guess. Breaks you down, rots you inside out.
And there is no cure for life, like there is no cure for heartache.
Your heart that pumped blood through your veins, blue as ice.
I think now, life rotted you so fully inside it wanted to break you outside too
42 broken bones, punctures to your lungs, instant death.
That’s what life calls one hell of a car accident.
Broken, Alone, Rotting. That’s what life calls me for living.
And life eventually goes on, goes on finding new ways to get under your skin
As I watched you through the windscreen, you bled red not blue.
And I saw life under your skin.