a letter from a young psycho by Vaishnavi Kolluru
i’ve failed again
so i cry
my face perpendicular to the floor
so that the tears don't wash away
my $25/microtube acne cream
and this is not the first
but rather the second-to-last
in the list of treatments for the little volcanoes
that get worse when i pop them
but oh,
i just can't resist
because when i see them in the mirror
i want them gone
just like i want
with everything.
i have hyperpigmentation
(defined: excessive localized melanin, characteristic of post-traumatic response)
this i inflict on myself via manual eruption
so the scar trauma doesn't heal for months
like the trauma to my globular soul
from when people pop my feelings.
they say
stop—
you’re being dramatic—
there are many worse off
you’ve a house
friends
family
an education
how fortunate!
but, i think, the people without suffer a different pain:
they struggle to survive
while i struggle to live.
i hamper my survival
in my desperate attempt to live.
people force me to fear the Unknown
so i listen
and try to pop-pop-pop
my way out, into the Happy Earth;
but i am the pus
that pollutes the face of Hell
forever parasitic
so no acne pill can rid this Earth of me
for i am the bacterium that infects the skin of this planet
and i must make my marks.
the faces will peel with benzoyl peroxide
the skins will implode with adapalene
the stomachs will burn with doxycycline
the muscles will ache with accutane
but i still won’t let them heal.
i will force them to fear me
more than they do the Unknown.
i won’t spare a square inch of this planet
because i want it how i want my acne
because i want it how they want my feelings
because i want it how i want my life
gone.
thank me for my service.
“I submitted this piece to a magazine and it got rejected with the quickest response I have ever seen from a lit mag. This was expected but not fully; this piece practically wrote itself, and it did so eloquently, so I expected it to fare better than some other submissions I've made. It came about when I was writing a Christmas card to my sister, and I realized I had nothing but sad things to say. All I could think of was, "sorry for not spending time with you," and the like. I had already done my skincare that night, so I couldn't cry with my face straight up; I had to look down so that the tears fell instead on my Santa PJ pants. Thus, an idea was born. Through an extended metaphor with my personal acne battle, I wanted to reflect how emotions can bottle up and, if neglected, produce a psycho.”
Vaishnavi Kolluru (she/them) is a Bay Area, USA born-and-raised teenage writer of South Indian descent. She is new to formal creative writing, but she has been writing tidbits of stories and songs for many years now. She also experiments with her STEM writing side in her science blog, sixfootscience.com.