Main Street Magazine Spring '23

a day's worth of dirt
By Erica Faucher, art by Thomas Osborne
The morning greets me with dust in my eyes
Sweat coating my skin like a salty wrap
I slide out of my bed
Like a sausage coming out of its casing
And peel open the shower curtain
To rid my skin of its grime
All the soap in the world
Would never be enough to clean me
I trek through the mud to class
Grease stains on my clothes
Like an oily mechanic
And the stench of old fries lingering above me
I slouch at my desk
The professor’s words on the other side of the room
My mind falls deep
Into the depths of my head
Light flashes before my eyes
And I recall a few nights prior
When I had blood on my hands
As I ran out of College Woods
My eyes flip back open to the physics board
The white chalk dusting the professor’s sleeves
All the soap in the world
Would never be able to clean them off
I run to the library to study
Just to distract the stampede in my brain
But when I see him sitting there—
That ghostly figure haunting me —
With a smile carved into his face
And a rock resting in his hand
I run to the bathroom to puke
And it’s all blood I see
Like the time I stood over the dead boy
The one with the smile stretched across his cheeks
Under a tree in College Woods
With a rock sitting by his hand
All the soap in the world
Would never be enough to clean his head
I gasp for oxygen as I choke on my bile
My eyes roll up, into my skull
That night will not leave me
And I am forced to recall it all
I remember seeing that boy
The one with the creepy smile
The one who held that rock
Meditating under that white pine
But I could not forgive him for the damage he’d done
For how he ripped me up inside
I knew that if I killed him
That boy with the strange smirk
I could never wash away my regret
But I remembered the things he called me
And how he wiped dirt on my forehead
The day I was going to ask her out
And how he told her I was weird
But I’m not the weird one now
I’m the dirtiest bastard in the woods
His blood will forever remain on my palms
And on the rock I used to end his pitiful life
And no matter how many times I wash my hands
Or how many showers I take
Like Lady Macbeth’s bloodstained hands
I can never cleanse myself of my sin