By Gigi Rice 

  

 

I like to pick off my scabs 

 

 

I like to pick off my scabs. 

This is my first time, but also not. 

There is a right timing to everything though, too early and it’s a bloody mess.

Not sure which this is. 

 

It’s good that I’ve picked off a scab already

Cause my scholarship master plan has been foiled

If Richard from the Durham Conservative office ever gets to heaven 

He owes me 16.5 grand 

 

I like to peel off my scabs slowly

Mostly because I’m putting off the scholarship competition

Self indulgence is quite poetic 

Like making sure you feel the sting from every millimeter of parting scab skin 

 

My favourite kind of scabs have hair underneath

It’s like a weird sort of Christmas joy 

Alas! This one is curly and super long! 

It’s amazing the things you don’t expect from touching your scabs

 

Where do scabs go? 

Its rather like socks in a washing machine 

Only a champion few will emerge 

The rest to remain in the vast metallic silver universe 

 

The best scabs are the ones you pick from your face

Foundation is awfully bumpy otherwise 

There’s nothing like the relief of smooth skin 

Make sure you’ve squeezed all the gunk out the pores first 

 

Every scab that comes from you is unique 

Similar in colour, similar in raised format 

However, a wise at times man once told me this

Correlation does not imply identical causation 

 

I like what comes after a scab

Fresh new, puckered up buttercup skin 

 

If you’re lucky, a scar

Something to gossip in the pub about 

And every scar is a conversation starter 

“It was a shark in Tahiti”

So every scab is a prerequisite to avoiding loneliness 

Every wound, a chance to connect 

 

Sometimes scabs are misunderstood 

Pull it off, get it out there, and find it still bleeds

Stains your clothes with red velvet pinpricks

Or sometimes volcano heads

 

Is the eruption over once a scab forms? 

No. 

The white mess of infection can linger

But, if we never did anything to our scabs but “at the right time”  they’d all be dry and inconsequential 

 

I feel an affinity to bad scabs 

Aren’t we all imperfect? 

Don’t we all want someone to read us

Even if, just as a reminder that we are all unfinished 

 

There is a beauty to being pockmarked 

To the places where acne festered

To leaving behind moon-like craters and bowls

When the crusty exterior waves “goodbye my friend” 

 

I once got a scab popped in hospital 

It was full of fluid from a burn

The nurses reminded me of kind primary school teachers

I wouldn’t have had as good of a scab without their help

 

This is my scab but also not my first

Aren’t we all used to shedding skins 

To being this Gigi and that Gigi 

I have had many scabs that came from rebirthing myself over and over

 

Where does one put a scab?

Should I just neatly place it in the bin? 

Oh wait, thats where my scholarship video has gone 

Scabs are just external bogeys, 

 

Flick it into space and hope for the best