Burdens

[Achebe]

I always felt a nervous flutter
buying razor blades and peroxide
at the local pharmacy
but nobody ever batted an eye.

I carved, slashed, crosshatched--
watched as rivulets ran down,
admired them, the wounds
sometimes dripping into paint,
leaving DNA in my creations. 

My best work I left in a graveyard.

Had I known about scarification
I might have made designs instead of
chaotic and haphazard gashes, the scars
a reminder of ugliness so loud
my ears still ring now.

They say you can't remember pain.
True, you don't, just that there was,
but it is there like a shadow that remains.

Maybe one day there will be enough light
from all directions to make it go away.
The scars won't matter and I won't be so tired
from being an ox in a yoke.

I liked the opening strophe. After that, there's too much gnashing of teeth and moaning without giving the reader any reason to be emotionally invested in the narrator's plight. I caught my finger in a car door the other day, so why should I care about you slashing yourself? If it's childhood sexual abuse, rape, or a cheating lover, then you have my sympathy and attention. But you never tell me or hint at it.

EDIT: let me clarify what I meant by the above - the 'you' should be read as 'narrator', who may or may not be the author. I am not suggesting that the author is speaking in her own voice - she may or may not be, that is none of my concern. But whether narrated in her own voice or the voice of an imagined third person, a background to the suffering is necessary for the poem to work.