Thick, white gauze strapped to my leg and pounded against the heartbeat that throbbed slowly, pulsing up red against the stark white of the bandage. My heart banged like a trapped bird in my ribcage, and I bit down hard on my fingers as he stitched my leg up, badly. Wounds won’t heal like that, I think to myself, and bite down harder than before.
Alyssa W
The are like tape for your wounds. They go nowhere, always steady. They are your helper when you need to heal. They are the wraps to a fall, and a new start.
Kevin
I hate these white bandages on my hands. They remind me of that night. Even when they take them off, the scars will still be there. I can’t face the scars, I can barely look at the wrappings with out sobbing. Without flashing back to screaming and the blood and the lights.
Mira
not even a million bandages can heal the scars that I have from my past. they can cover my wounds, but they will never be able to take the pain away.
Bandages cover up wounds. Everyone uses bandages. They’re one of those universal things. Even the bloods and the crips use bandages. Maybe if they knew they had this commonality they wouldn’t fight so much. Be united by the common bond of bandaids.
Bandages are useful,sometimes, I guess. Because you know, people get hurt, and bandages help people, so that’s useful. But not always you know. Because sometimes people just dont want to be helped, or sometimes cuts are too big.
bandages dont fix the problems. she used to think if the wounds were covered up, they could be forgotten about, out of sight, out of mind. but she’s beginning to learn that it just isnt enough to cover the wounds. they need to heal
Molly
She got up out of the dirt. Hurt from the words they called her. Ignoring the pain she put on a bandage.
The bandages of my past have been removed to reveal a healed future.
shae
Triggered: my desire for healing. And Don’t Cry for Me Argentina starts playing. Bandages: I need to cover my wounds. And if something good can come from bad, then the past can rest at least.
bandages reminded me of when i used to cut myself and i tried to cover them up. it was really sad…. its probably bad that i thought of that but hey i recovered! thats good but sometimes i wish i would of never stopped. it felt so good.
kelsey
She wore a blanket of bandages, with slivers of skin showing for titilation. Pain was her first and last breath.
Bandages heal cuts and pain. I remember as a child I would be covered in bandages from all my adventures. Bandages help war victims. yeah. bandaids. I like them.
shae
Bandages help cover you up when you’re hurt. The first four letters spell band. I’m in a band. Sad Sam Blues Jam. The second four letters spell ages. God has been here for ages. There is a movie called Rock of Ages about bands. Bandages are also called Band-Aids. They are cool. Especially when they have Elmo on them.
Sam Johnson
i could’nt help but run, the bandages were breaking but my heart was alive. i was feeling the wind in my hair and the sun on my face. my knees stung where the cloth rubbed against the raw flesh but i didnt care. it felt too good to be alive.
There isn’t really much more to do than sit and try to wait. It’s an unpleasant room. There’s a sort of smell in lurking the air like spilled urine poorly masked with floral cleaner. I’m having trouble imagining him here, patiently sitting on the worn red vinyl seats and reading dog-eared articles from a back issue of Women’s Health. Waiting to go into a smaller, stale-smelling room to be shown the ultrasound picture of the hole in his heart by a grim man in a white coat. Michael had always been a big man; the idea that something the size of a pinprick turning him so weak and pale and dangerously ill never seemed possible to me.
And today was supposed to be the day the bandages were going to come off.
So I settle deeper into my vinyl chair, wondering if this was the one he sat in months ago. I peruse articles on women’s respiratory care and weight loss tips and think, is this what he read too? The old magazine becomes heavier in my hands as I try to read the words as he would have, imagining the sound of his voice in my head.
I spend the rest of the day like this, looking for any bit of familiarity he might have left behind. Sitting with Michael’s ghost.
I wrapped yet another bandage around my wrist. I knew that I had to stop. But I couldn’t and I wouldn’t. The rush from the blood loss was intoxicating. The way that the blade would dance across the tender skin of my arm was both beautiful and repulsive. The thought would send a shiver up my spine and my eyes would settle longingly on the knife once again. I would gouge my veins out just for that natural high.
This word makes me think about 2002. Kristen Vetter had somehow finagled us 20 dollar SXSW wristbands and we were able to attend seeing bands from all over the world. We were supposed to see Hot, HOt, Heat , who sings a song called Bandages, but we were busted before we could. It was the last day and we had already seen so many bands we didn’t care.
A sob chokes in my throat as I push the door open, peering into the dank hospital room. A light flickers in the corner and the whole place smells like antiseptic. He lays in the hospital bed on the opposite side of the room, the dirty sheets crumpled around him. I begin to feel dizzy as I walk towards him, listening to my shoes clap against the tiles.
“Hi,” he says when I finally make it to the side of his bed. His voice is cloudy and cracks as he speaks . . . as if he’s been crying.
“Hello,” I answer, barely able to control the tears that are spilling from my eyes and running down my cheeks. “How are you feeling?”
“Good,” he says, managing a smile, although it isn’t very convincing.
It was strange looking at the bandages on his arm . . . or what used to be his arm, but was now nothing but a stump protruding from his shoulder.
Bandages help broken things. Bandages would help hearts, if only hearts could use a bandage. A lot of bandages are intangible: friendship, love, a kind word on a subway.
Bandages aren’t always good. Bandages don’t heal. Bandages cover.
Jillian
I unwrapped the soiled bandage from the old woman’s leg. She didn’t make a sound, but I felt the muscles in her leg tense from the pain. I glanced up as a tear, slide down the side of her cheek as she bit down on her knuckles, averting her eyes from me.
Sheila Good
he patches war wounds
with band-aids
as if his prior
bands of woodmen
would come to preserve him
a bandage scavenged
to cover a dusty life of love
a rusted trust
once a metal frame encasing hope
Phil
ouch, that hurts. protect, retrospect. don’t neglect. pain. it’s real. it’s what you feel. no time to kill. patch over scars. it’ll get you far. bar bar, open the bar, trapped your heart. let it heal then take off the bandages. you’re what you feel.
Sierra
The bandages were always there. She never took them off as she was too afraid to show her scars. Afraid of the looks she would get. The bandages were her only hope of hiding. She never wanted to be seen. She wanted it all to go away.
Vanna
Bandages remind me of the proudest times in my life. Winning a race when I was little even when I scraped my knee. Doing hurdles for the first time and falling. Bandages are happiness.
Maddy
The tin can lingered atop the dusty medicine cabinet shelf. I reached for it, and I felt the grimy sticky residue under my fingerpads. Inside, they thought, were bandages. Simple bandages in an old tin bandage time. Oh, they were wrong.
Bandages were not necessary to her. She worse her cuts and bruises with pride. Master loved that about her and she had never used her safeword.
Wildfire8470
There are so many and so many spots where they can’t go. Today I found out she died. She died in March in the cloudiest part of the city. A friend ran into her boyfriend on the bus. He asked how she was and he said she was dead. Overdosed. Probably suicide. He sent me the news via text. All the blood rushes out of me in these moments you could knock me over. I’m not light. I’m not loose. I’d crack and shatter. She was always so nervous. But happy. She was up for anything. On Thanksgiving she made us a feast. She dragged a TV from her bedroom into the kitchen so we could watch football in the afternoon. She was going on a date and didn’t know what to do. I gave her my museum pass. She took it and came back with a poster for me. It’s black and white. About two and a half by three feet. It’s a crow flying through a clouded sky. I don’t like thinking of her alone out there in that part of the city. It’s called the Sunset but there’s never any sun. Only clouds. She’d lost a lot in her lifetime. I’m angry that she stopped. She had a daughter. They looked like twins. She was very beautiful. I wish she kept trying. I’m angry she didn’t. I’m angry. I’m angry I wasn’t a better friend. I should have kept in touch. Someone so vulnerable shouldn’t be left alone. Especially in the cloudiest part of the city in March. That can feel very lonely. I hope she didn’t feel lonely. I suspect she did. I wish I’d been a person she could have called. I wish I’d given her that. I wish I’d told her I took the poster and framed it in a hundred dollar frame. It hangs in the center of my room. It’s the first thing everyone notices. They always ask, “Where did you get that crow?” I say, “My old roommate gave it to me. She was pretty cool.” I hope you’ve found your peace. KCM
Meg
There once was an age
when bandages were all the rage,
From Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,
To Might Morphine Power Rangers
Falls, cuts, needle sticks, and scrapes
Were all covered in tape….
my mother has bandages on her leg, I hope they disappear soon. I miss her being healthy. I guess they are helping.
nsbfh
Bandages were not necessary. She wore her cuts and bruises with pride.
Wildfire8470
bandages are for bruises well maybe not bruises but other injuries small ones like cut and scabs nd stuff like that idk why i dont like bandages mybe bc they remind you of the past when you gt hurt now im all deep band aids are ot cool i remmeber
Kyle McCutcheon
Reliever of pain, of broken flesh, broken bodies, broken minds. Wounds. Will it put me back together??
Ashlee
All up and down his arm – like a map, marking battle scars, tears lost, fights won.
She relished that worn and torn beauty.
He hated it.
But she loved it anyways, gently caressing the wounds until she cried herself (and him, admittedly) to sleep.
In some sort of sad love story.
shots and the tasmanian devil and disney princesses speckle my upper arms. every year or two they come around, but this year is different — this year is the last year. grandma too old for the pediatrician.
I fell down when I was little, a lot, I had all sorts of different band aids. Generic kind, princess kind. My favorites were the spider man ones. Not sure why. When I turned thirteen my dad and his wife got me a spiderman bounce house thing. It was fun but strange because I’m his little girl. Not boy.
Alora Macias
I saw the most amazing picture today. It transported me immediately to a place I cherish. With one image, I am struck with wanting. And need to share said need. No bandages will be needed. Unles lovingly and slowly applied. Sometime after what was captured in the pic.
I have no idea what to write about bandages. I was asked to bandage my sister’s head once for a Red Cross First Aid course. I suck at bandaging. But I like bandages. It makes me feel all proffessional to pretend like I have some sort of idea of what I’m doing while bandaging somebody’s arm or leg. Or my own. It’s like playing doctor ten years after I should’ve stopped and not caring that it makes me look like a child because I am one inside anyway.
Thick, white gauze strapped to my leg and pounded against the heartbeat that throbbed slowly, pulsing up red against the stark white of the bandage. My heart banged like a trapped bird in my ribcage, and I bit down hard on my fingers as he stitched my leg up, badly. Wounds won’t heal like that, I think to myself, and bite down harder than before.
The are like tape for your wounds. They go nowhere, always steady. They are your helper when you need to heal. They are the wraps to a fall, and a new start.
I hate these white bandages on my hands. They remind me of that night. Even when they take them off, the scars will still be there. I can’t face the scars, I can barely look at the wrappings with out sobbing. Without flashing back to screaming and the blood and the lights.
not even a million bandages can heal the scars that I have from my past. they can cover my wounds, but they will never be able to take the pain away.
Bandages cover up wounds. Everyone uses bandages. They’re one of those universal things. Even the bloods and the crips use bandages. Maybe if they knew they had this commonality they wouldn’t fight so much. Be united by the common bond of bandaids.
Bandages are useful,sometimes, I guess. Because you know, people get hurt, and bandages help people, so that’s useful. But not always you know. Because sometimes people just dont want to be helped, or sometimes cuts are too big.
bandages dont fix the problems. she used to think if the wounds were covered up, they could be forgotten about, out of sight, out of mind. but she’s beginning to learn that it just isnt enough to cover the wounds. they need to heal
She got up out of the dirt. Hurt from the words they called her. Ignoring the pain she put on a bandage.
The bandages of my past have been removed to reveal a healed future.
Triggered: my desire for healing. And Don’t Cry for Me Argentina starts playing. Bandages: I need to cover my wounds. And if something good can come from bad, then the past can rest at least.
bandages reminded me of when i used to cut myself and i tried to cover them up. it was really sad…. its probably bad that i thought of that but hey i recovered! thats good but sometimes i wish i would of never stopped. it felt so good.
She wore a blanket of bandages, with slivers of skin showing for titilation. Pain was her first and last breath.
Bandages heal cuts and pain. I remember as a child I would be covered in bandages from all my adventures. Bandages help war victims. yeah. bandaids. I like them.
Bandages help cover you up when you’re hurt. The first four letters spell band. I’m in a band. Sad Sam Blues Jam. The second four letters spell ages. God has been here for ages. There is a movie called Rock of Ages about bands. Bandages are also called Band-Aids. They are cool. Especially when they have Elmo on them.
i could’nt help but run, the bandages were breaking but my heart was alive. i was feeling the wind in my hair and the sun on my face. my knees stung where the cloth rubbed against the raw flesh but i didnt care. it felt too good to be alive.
There isn’t really much more to do than sit and try to wait. It’s an unpleasant room. There’s a sort of smell in lurking the air like spilled urine poorly masked with floral cleaner. I’m having trouble imagining him here, patiently sitting on the worn red vinyl seats and reading dog-eared articles from a back issue of Women’s Health. Waiting to go into a smaller, stale-smelling room to be shown the ultrasound picture of the hole in his heart by a grim man in a white coat. Michael had always been a big man; the idea that something the size of a pinprick turning him so weak and pale and dangerously ill never seemed possible to me.
And today was supposed to be the day the bandages were going to come off.
So I settle deeper into my vinyl chair, wondering if this was the one he sat in months ago. I peruse articles on women’s respiratory care and weight loss tips and think, is this what he read too? The old magazine becomes heavier in my hands as I try to read the words as he would have, imagining the sound of his voice in my head.
I spend the rest of the day like this, looking for any bit of familiarity he might have left behind. Sitting with Michael’s ghost.
I wrapped yet another bandage around my wrist. I knew that I had to stop. But I couldn’t and I wouldn’t. The rush from the blood loss was intoxicating. The way that the blade would dance across the tender skin of my arm was both beautiful and repulsive. The thought would send a shiver up my spine and my eyes would settle longingly on the knife once again. I would gouge my veins out just for that natural high.
This word makes me think about 2002. Kristen Vetter had somehow finagled us 20 dollar SXSW wristbands and we were able to attend seeing bands from all over the world. We were supposed to see Hot, HOt, Heat , who sings a song called Bandages, but we were busted before we could. It was the last day and we had already seen so many bands we didn’t care.
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toes
A sob chokes in my throat as I push the door open, peering into the dank hospital room. A light flickers in the corner and the whole place smells like antiseptic. He lays in the hospital bed on the opposite side of the room, the dirty sheets crumpled around him. I begin to feel dizzy as I walk towards him, listening to my shoes clap against the tiles.
“Hi,” he says when I finally make it to the side of his bed. His voice is cloudy and cracks as he speaks . . . as if he’s been crying.
“Hello,” I answer, barely able to control the tears that are spilling from my eyes and running down my cheeks. “How are you feeling?”
“Good,” he says, managing a smile, although it isn’t very convincing.
It was strange looking at the bandages on his arm . . . or what used to be his arm, but was now nothing but a stump protruding from his shoulder.
Bandages help broken things. Bandages would help hearts, if only hearts could use a bandage. A lot of bandages are intangible: friendship, love, a kind word on a subway.
Bandages aren’t always good. Bandages don’t heal. Bandages cover.
I unwrapped the soiled bandage from the old woman’s leg. She didn’t make a sound, but I felt the muscles in her leg tense from the pain. I glanced up as a tear, slide down the side of her cheek as she bit down on her knuckles, averting her eyes from me.
he patches war wounds
with band-aids
as if his prior
bands of woodmen
would come to preserve him
a bandage scavenged
to cover a dusty life of love
a rusted trust
once a metal frame encasing hope
ouch, that hurts. protect, retrospect. don’t neglect. pain. it’s real. it’s what you feel. no time to kill. patch over scars. it’ll get you far. bar bar, open the bar, trapped your heart. let it heal then take off the bandages. you’re what you feel.
The bandages were always there. She never took them off as she was too afraid to show her scars. Afraid of the looks she would get. The bandages were her only hope of hiding. She never wanted to be seen. She wanted it all to go away.
Bandages remind me of the proudest times in my life. Winning a race when I was little even when I scraped my knee. Doing hurdles for the first time and falling. Bandages are happiness.
The tin can lingered atop the dusty medicine cabinet shelf. I reached for it, and I felt the grimy sticky residue under my fingerpads. Inside, they thought, were bandages. Simple bandages in an old tin bandage time. Oh, they were wrong.
Bandages were not necessary to her. She worse her cuts and bruises with pride. Master loved that about her and she had never used her safeword.
There are so many and so many spots where they can’t go. Today I found out she died. She died in March in the cloudiest part of the city. A friend ran into her boyfriend on the bus. He asked how she was and he said she was dead. Overdosed. Probably suicide. He sent me the news via text. All the blood rushes out of me in these moments you could knock me over. I’m not light. I’m not loose. I’d crack and shatter. She was always so nervous. But happy. She was up for anything. On Thanksgiving she made us a feast. She dragged a TV from her bedroom into the kitchen so we could watch football in the afternoon. She was going on a date and didn’t know what to do. I gave her my museum pass. She took it and came back with a poster for me. It’s black and white. About two and a half by three feet. It’s a crow flying through a clouded sky. I don’t like thinking of her alone out there in that part of the city. It’s called the Sunset but there’s never any sun. Only clouds. She’d lost a lot in her lifetime. I’m angry that she stopped. She had a daughter. They looked like twins. She was very beautiful. I wish she kept trying. I’m angry she didn’t. I’m angry. I’m angry I wasn’t a better friend. I should have kept in touch. Someone so vulnerable shouldn’t be left alone. Especially in the cloudiest part of the city in March. That can feel very lonely. I hope she didn’t feel lonely. I suspect she did. I wish I’d been a person she could have called. I wish I’d given her that. I wish I’d told her I took the poster and framed it in a hundred dollar frame. It hangs in the center of my room. It’s the first thing everyone notices. They always ask, “Where did you get that crow?” I say, “My old roommate gave it to me. She was pretty cool.” I hope you’ve found your peace. KCM
There once was an age
when bandages were all the rage,
From Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,
To Might Morphine Power Rangers
Falls, cuts, needle sticks, and scrapes
Were all covered in tape….
my mother has bandages on her leg, I hope they disappear soon. I miss her being healthy. I guess they are helping.
Bandages were not necessary. She wore her cuts and bruises with pride.
bandages are for bruises well maybe not bruises but other injuries small ones like cut and scabs nd stuff like that idk why i dont like bandages mybe bc they remind you of the past when you gt hurt now im all deep band aids are ot cool i remmeber
Reliever of pain, of broken flesh, broken bodies, broken minds. Wounds. Will it put me back together??
All up and down his arm – like a map, marking battle scars, tears lost, fights won.
She relished that worn and torn beauty.
He hated it.
But she loved it anyways, gently caressing the wounds until she cried herself (and him, admittedly) to sleep.
In some sort of sad love story.
shots and the tasmanian devil and disney princesses speckle my upper arms. every year or two they come around, but this year is different — this year is the last year. grandma too old for the pediatrician.
I fell down when I was little, a lot, I had all sorts of different band aids. Generic kind, princess kind. My favorites were the spider man ones. Not sure why. When I turned thirteen my dad and his wife got me a spiderman bounce house thing. It was fun but strange because I’m his little girl. Not boy.
I saw the most amazing picture today. It transported me immediately to a place I cherish. With one image, I am struck with wanting. And need to share said need. No bandages will be needed. Unles lovingly and slowly applied. Sometime after what was captured in the pic.
I have no idea what to write about bandages. I was asked to bandage my sister’s head once for a Red Cross First Aid course. I suck at bandaging. But I like bandages. It makes me feel all proffessional to pretend like I have some sort of idea of what I’m doing while bandaging somebody’s arm or leg. Or my own. It’s like playing doctor ten years after I should’ve stopped and not caring that it makes me look like a child because I am one inside anyway.