It lives beneath the seventh layer down,
too deep to scratch and too persistent to drown
in antihistamines or willpower or booze.
The itch is not the skin. The itch is in the fuse
box of the nervous system, crossed and sparking hot,
a signal saying something is wrong with what I have got
wired between my brain and every fingertip.
The itch is a transmission and I cannot skip the trip.
The itch is moving. The itch has legs.
It crawls from the spine to the back of my head,
it settles in the places I cannot reach alone,
the itch has colonized the space between the skin and bone.
I scratched until the sheets looked like a surgery,
I scratched until the bathroom mirror startled me,
the forearms raw, the shoulders stripped in parallel lines,
the body marking territory with its own designs.
The dermatologist found nothing. Took a biopsy. Clear.
She said the word psychosomatic and I felt the sheer
indignity of being told the thing I feel all night
is manufactured by a mind that cannot get it right.
At 3 AM the itch becomes a conversation,
a call-and-response between my nerve and my frustration.
I scratch. It moves. I follow. It retreats beneath the rib,
surfaces behind the knee, the crook of elbow’s bib
of tender skin where veins run visible and blue.
The itch knows every vulnerable inch. The itch knew
me before I knew it, lived inside the wiring long
before the first scratch broke the skin, the itch was always wrong
in me. The itch was patient. The itch was always there.
And now it has the surface and the itch does not play fair.