None of your business

The toilets in A&E
have changed the lights to UV
stops me pushing pencils in my veins
and just retching bile  
while trying not to kneel
at the pube ridden porcelain alter.

No one darns stockings any more
but I know why she did
when she smelled of strong tea
deafened by the TV nobody watched,
tracing the lines of her face
on see through toilet paper
that cut your arse like blunt razor blades.

Thoughts carved and counted
on cell block walls, iterations of
all the teeth bones blood and muscle
smashed through the grinder
and out into shinny sausage skins.

We notice the hand that shakes
and decide we know why
without ever daring to ask
and, well, you believe us
because we believe in ourselves.
Ability is abstract so don't look at me
like that.