The title does the first piece of work. A single lowercase word, «cut», sits in guillemets like a quotation, as though the speaker has to hold it at arm's length before they can talk about it. What follows is a short, plain confession about self-harm. Its central idea is uncomfortable but honest: stopping is not one decision made once, but an argument the speaker keeps having with themselves, and it isn't clear who is winning. Nothing is known here about who wrote it beyond a name that reads like an online handle, so the poem has to stand on its own words, and it does.
The poem is built from contradiction. Count how many lines begin with "But": "But now I don't," "But I never do," "But I might in the end," "But I can change the future," and finally "But now I dont have a choice." Each time the speaker makes a claim, the next line pushes back. The opening already shows this. "I always think about it / But I never do" sets two absolutes against each other, and the pairing of "always" and "never" shows how much strain sits beneath the calm grammar. Willpower and temptation take up the same space.
The few images the poem allows itself are small and physical. "I once fell, / now Im sore" is the most striking. "Fell" suggests a slip or a lapse rather than a deliberate act, and it reads as a moment of weakness the speaker doesn't fully excuse. "Sore" is a bruised, aching word, and it suggests pain that lingers long after the event. Because "once" and "now" share two short lines with no full stop between them, the past seems to leak straight into the present.
The second stanza turns on a double meaning. "If I could go back / I would say stop, / I'd take the knife" imagines time travel, an older self stepping in to protect a younger one. Two lines later the same phrase returns with the opposite sense: "never wanting too go back / But I might in the end." Now "go back" means relapse, not rewinding. The speaker wants to return to the past to fix it and fears returning to it in behaviour, and one repeated phrase holds both feelings. The admission "I might in the end" is the bravest moment in the poem, because it refuses to promise more than the speaker can honestly deliver.
Then comes "I can't change the pasts / But I can change the future," which sounds like a borrowed saying, the sort of thing people tell you. The comma where a full stop should be leaves it hanging, and the hope is immediately tested by the last three lines. "I won't cut like / I used too" breaks after "like," so it could mean that the old pattern is over or that something of it remains. Then "now I dont have a choice" echoes the poem's second line ("But now I don't") and undermines it. The ending might mean the speaker has no choice but to stop. It might equally mean the urge feels like compulsion. The poem refuses to say, and the ambiguity is the point.
Formally, there is no rhyme and no steady metre. The lines are short, mostly four to six syllables, and they move like speech, with stops where a person might hesitate. Commas end lines that feel unfinished, and the spelling slips ("use to," "too go back," "Im") give the poem an unpolished, unedited feel. That rawness makes it read less like a performance and more like something said quietly.
Its significance lies in this honesty. Poems about hard experiences often hurry towards a triumphant ending, but this one leaves recovery unresolved, with progress and doubt sitting side by side. For readers who recognise that gap between "I don't" and "I want to," it may feel reassuringly truthful. If any of it feels close to home, talking to a trusted adult, a school counsellor or a doctor is a good next step, because the speaker doesn't have to keep this argument alone.