Deconstructing my poetry: "The First Patch of Eczema"
an exercise in self-indulgence/peek into my writing brain
A couple months ago, a red patch appeared on my inner right wrist. It was bumpy and scaly, had a shine to it in certain lighting, and itched like the devil at night. I went to a dermatologist who confirmed it was eczema.
“I’ve never had eczema in my life,” I bristled, “how could this turn up now?”
“Does anyone in your family have it?”
I thought of my mom perched at the kitchen island: black coffee, sprawling newspaper, tearing apart her elbows whenever she had a free hand—a mindless act of self-destruction.
Most people in my family have eczema and just like the whole needing glasses thing, God held off on me until he couldn’t. Now I wake up and pop contact lenses in, apply vaseline to my wrist. The beauty and freedom we are born with eventually Irish goodbye and we are left, hunched over the bathroom sink, performing rituals of the broken.
So, the poem. To communicate something like my skin turning against me at 32 years old as a metaphor for lost innocence, I wanted to invoke this gauzy, distorted pop-girlhood imagery that convinces us purity of skin=innocence in the first place. It’s sort of coquette-adjacent, right? A Victorian child is Dolores Haze is Lux Lisbon, perfectly flush and disaffected, the death drive mingling with her powdery scent. To seek myself in that particular iconography is to reckon with the pressure to always remain a girl. Botox. Hairbow. Shaved pussy.
And who better to connect the dots than Mazzy Star: dream pop for the end of the world when each day is pregnant with finality. Hope Sandoval represents a kind of haunted agelessness; she is exquisitely gorgeous, her voice an incantatory lullaby.
The word “blush,” which refers, initially, to Dior’s Backstage Rosy Glow Blush in shade 001 Pink (“Rose Blood,” if you will), stands alone as a transition to womanhood via reflection on the past. You once were feverish with life, sweating without shame, clad in all your barfly parents could afford. Unstoppable. Blush was the adolescent fire of being yourself then, as much as it is, now, the embarrassment you feel upon getting eczema in a culture that’s urged you to be perfect. A sign that, indeed, you and your skin are growing up. The veil is lifting.
Though I am an average-sized woman, my wrists and hands are very small. So small that the jeweler who did our wedding bands said I almost broke his store record for smallest ring size (3.75ish). Shortly after the patch of eczema appeared on my wrist, another appeared on my finger, under my engagement ring—a promise of forever love. And so I cling to these parts of myself that never really grew as reminders of youth. Reminders of a time before half the people closest to me died and I was forced to become strong. Reminders of a time before I had eczema. Reminders of a time when I was blissfully unafraid of aging and, one day, being left because of it.
I want my soon-to-be husband to hold those parts of me, ugly and weathered as they become, without a care in the world. I want to see the promise of forever love fulfilled.
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This was beautiful!! Eczema has come for me at age 32 as well… on my eyelid 🥲 will think of it as Dior blush now 💕
This was beautiful, Dia. Hope Sandoval and Mazzy Star por vida! I suffer from Keratosis Pilaris. Most people grow out of it by the time they are 30 but if you don’t, you’re stuck with it for life 😑 Thanks, mom.
I hope you hold onto these parts of you forever. The curiosity, the self reflection, the ability to spin the questions into art that dazzles. It’s been a joy to experience life through your pen. 💗