It Was a Hack Job

[Truerenigma]

The acned boy behind the counter handed me my change
He must have had a good eye
for he asked if I had surgery on my wrist.

"For" is very old fashioned and strange here; consider a semi-colon to end L2 so that you can cut it.

The light scar on my left wrist tingled with recognition,
I responded without hesitation that at thirteen I tried to do surgery on myself,
"It was a hack job."

I'm not sure if the "hack job" line is needed. All that stuff about "without hesitation" can probably go too; it is not necessary yet to let the reader know it was a lie. Let them figure it out on there own.

There was no pain
There was no pain
Only in my mind so full of trauma I just wanted to let the horror escape.

These lines are trite emo and should be cut.

Why still do I clench this healed fist in anger?
I felt like a failure in life
My scar reminds me I failed death
No one knew a thing about mental illness
Just that I had a psychotic break.
I went Hannibal Lectar on my own wrist!!!

Hannibal Lectar ate human flesh. I don't think the narrator was hungry. You should probably cut this stanza too. The only thing I find fairly interesting that you might push a little harder to make work is the "failed in death" idea because it's a little bit different than the usual run-o-the mill. You are on well worn ground here and the trick is going to be keeping it fresh and only letting in that which is absolutely necessary to evoke this specific experience of retrospection.

I run my fingers over the smooth pale worm,
Thirty six stitches dissolved under my skin, holding sinu and tendons together.
"Plastic surgery" for six hours, how posh.
There was no residual remembrance
Just the scar,
faded in time
with the trauma.

The pale worm is good. I like the little bite in the tone in "how posh". Semi-colon to end the first line in this stanza may be a good idea. The imagery is good. Clear. Effective.

I sip my espresso and wonder at time
How dare I thought someday I would have a beautiful life?

This sentence needs another pass to untangle the grammar and tenses.

That I ever deserved joy or friendship was possible.

Same here. Best I can come up with by way of suggestion is list form:

I sip my espresso and wonder at time:
I thought someday I would have a beautiful life;
That I deserved joy and friendship was possible.

There is still a problem here though; it is abstract and melodramatic and doesn't actually engage the senses or evoke experience. There might be a metaphor that can work here. Since the narrator is wondering about time, something that metaphorically symbolizes brevity or change may be appropriate.

Shaking my wrist as if making the negativity
disappear,
It itches for a moment.

The abstract negativity is ineffective here, and doesn't itch. "Shaking my wrist as if it were an etch-e-sketch" is the first suggestion that comes to mind though I'm sure there is a better option.

I look out in the distance at a life well lived
Wanting to thank the coffee guy for this moment of reflection.

This is pretty good, but it may be nice to see an actually reflection, maybe in the coffee house window or something.



I usually wouldn't give something like this a second glance simply because the whole slit-wrist thing is so over-done. But the mature adult looking back is a little different, I think, and it so clearly conveys specific experience in the narrative that I think it's worth another pass or two. Try focusing on maturity, and the textile details of the present, things that may almost seem mundane, and use them to convey the reflection in a specific way that is not overly dramatic or sentimental, but collected mature and inciteful.

Thanks for posting.