alibi

she had to tell me
“roll up your sleeve.”
in my head i was
“goddamngoddamngoddamn”
and trying to find a way out of doing what
she told me to do.
i couldn’t
so i just rolled up my sleeve.
this was not one of the ways
i imagined the finding out.
my mom gasped
as the nurse wrapped the
stupid
scratchy
cold
fabric around my upper arm
and said
“what happened to your arm?”
i glanced at it
my mind working furiously,
telling itself,
“they don’t know, they don’t know”
trying to think of a way to explain away the
self-inflicted
ugly
crusty
cuts.
i settle on
“i fell down the stairs
because i was running.
didn’t want to be late for school.”
they didn’t find the flaw in my alibi
that the stairs, the edges
the part that would’ve scraped my arm
have metal covering them
and that the cuts are recent
yet i haven’t worn a t-shirt in weeks
and that the cuts are criss crossing
so many of them criss crossing
instead of being just a scrape
like they would be if i really did
fall
down
the
stairs.
so they still don’t know
so they’ll be extra pissed when they find out
that i cut
and i lied.
and
i
don’t
care.
i
don’t
give
a
crap.
i
just
feel
numb.