Another story about you.

You are afraid, scared, confused.

You don’t know what it means exactly, and no one can explain it to you so that you can actually understand. You grasp your right hand with your left, just so that you feel attached to something right now. Your fingers are cold and trembley. That surprises you for a second. It takes your mind off of the news. You focus on making yourself hold still. You tell your brain, but it just doesn’t seem to listen. Your left clutches your right more , engulfs it in it’s expanse. In your chest your heart beats a bit too fast, a bit too erratically. You hear each lub and dub in the air. The noises float around outside and inside of your ears, somewhere deep. Your clutched hands press into your abdomen to keep that heaviness down. It seems to press into you, it feels as though a bowling ball has materialized there, and is pressing on everything else. The weight centers you, but not in a good way. It brings you to this reality, over and over again. Each time you breathe it increases. Each time you breathe the pulsing inside of you gets louder, denser, the weight gazes at you, it stares and centers itself again.

All of the sudden all you can hear is the pulsing. Nothing else exists: just you, the offbeat pulse and the weight of it. The feeling that your drowning from the inside out. No, not drowning. You’re being suffocated. The feeling is not allowing your lungs to expand. Not allowing you to be. You move one shaking hand from the hole to your heart. Your skin is sticky and warmer than it should be. You should be all ice right now. The roughness of your worker’s hands chafe as you clutch at the beating of it, as you hold onto the only thing still working as it should. You press so hard you feel the beating in your thumbs, your fingers, too. The noise intensifies. It echoes itself. Your whole existence for those few seconds is a series of staccato drumbeats, fingers rapping, low notes on the piano.

Your knees do not hold you up now. They release into nothing until the floor kisses you. It is hard, cool and somehow, unequivocally inviting. Curling up into yourself into yourself lets you turn down the beats, decreases the weight, by a miniscule fraction, but still…

Your hands seem to know how to comfort you. They rub the denim of your jeans in rhythmic motions, elliptical. At least something is still in rhythm. The material is thin with stretching and working and life. With your knees holding your stomach you can breathe. The air comes in forcefully and all at once. You choke on it. A scene from log ago flashes through your head, your grandmother “does the air have bones in it.” A giggle escapes your lips. You feel your face conform to a smile, it didn’t have your permission. But, what needs per mission form you nowadays? At least you made it home before you caused a scene. At least here you can by hysteric without anyone knowing.

That night your dreams are unusual, exotic, awkward and vividly different. They point to realities in ways, yet are vastly unrealistic. In one, the cold metallic scent of tinfoil infiltrates. It is spread out around you as you sit on the floor. The knife in your hand is the one you use to carve turkey. It should be up to the job. In your dream the blade feels like silk, the handle smooth and polished, marble. Over your finger you run the knife, to test it. It almost seems to tickle. Giggles bubble up and spill into your ears as the red escapes the skin. The blood smells metallic, too, just like the foil, it is warm though, much warmer than you are.

Slowly... you blink awake.

The carver is a part of your arm, an extension of yourself. It is made to be there. The tinfoil seems weird. You just use a towel. The carving knife though, that is just right. It really does feel perfect. The first cut, true to your dream, on your fingers, doesn’t bring forth the right type of giggle. In your dream it was soft, melodious, tickle induced. This time it is hard, maniacal, crazed. It does hurt, but it does feel right, too. You draw it across your skin to cut it out. Raggedly, it is harder than was in a dream. It isn’t long before that metallic smell is all you can discern. It isn’t long before you realize how good it is. It isn’t long before you decide that the shimmer on the edge of your eyes is an omen, a welcome one. It isn’t long before you don’t remember, before you’re black, before you’re gone.

A Story About You.

This is what you’d have seen, heard, known, if you’d have been me. This is how you would experience life.

At home: you look into the mirror, ignoring the toothpaste spatter. You touch your cheeks, pink from the hike up the stairs. You can’t help but wonder if the color of your porcelain, snowy, feathery, and yet another cliché for your white, as death skin is to blame. Your hair is your next attribute under scrutiny. Kinks escaping from the braid wrapped around your head are a brownish, blondish, red, and messy. Those stupid locks are never where they are meant to be, and leave you feeling unkempt all the time. Maybe you look as unkempt as you feel. Maybe it is the weight, maybe those extra thirty pounds on your five foot frame really do matter that much. Oh! Your five foot frame! Are you just too short? Heels! You’ll just wear heels from now on! The back of your mind screams of the impracticality of your newest idea, but then again, when have you ever been practical?

You see why he does what he does. You know your imperfections.

You want to tell him. You want him to know how you feel, about how he makes you feel. You can’t really describe what happens to you when it happens. The tingle of your lips, the warmth spreading through you: the hope that one day he will stop and speak to you again. That he will say more than his customary “good morning”.

You shake a little too noticeably, standing outside of his office. The wood of his office door seems hard, a little too warm under your hand. The smoothness of his voice tells you to come in, and the warmth covers you. It seeps in through your ears as you hear him, and your eyes, as the door sweeps open and you see him in all of his righteousness and prestige. You can’t help but wonder how the warmth would feel if you touched him, if you could taste him. Whoa, you need to stop yourself. You need to breathe. You realize he was talking, what did you miss?

……………………………………………..

You wake up slowly, fuzzy on the inside. The mattress is stiff under you, firm. His Egyptian cotton doesn’t feel so soft as you flex your fingers and run the back of your hand along your body, over your thigh and hip. Skimming the thumb sized bruise your thumb didn’t press into existence. The finger prints match the ones on your doorknob, your drawer pulls, your ring. Your body is warmer than it should be. You skin feels normal to your hands, the right temperature. It should feel cold, like death, like frostbite, like numb from ice. It betrays you and your thoughts. Your body lies to your soul, and to the world.

You mouth is dry and raw and unclean. It bubbles up from the back of your throat, but a quick swallow and shallow breath puts it into place. Your fingers surprise you when they brush across the broken skin of your lips. The corners of your mouth don’t want to cooperate as you grimace, as your face changes from sleep to emotion.

Your body groans as loud as the bed as you twist around, untangling your limbs from the burnt pumpkin sheets the somehow found their way around your legs. Your toes on the all too familiar plush of the carpet is welcoming. It grounds you, you feel more connected with your mind now.

As you lean over to stretch, your hair touches your face and shoulders, so softly. It smells like him, not you. It smells like his body and his cologne, not like it should, like your shampoo, lilacs and vanilla and clam.

..................................................................

The water rises to cover you and the smells of citrus and chill and steam bubble up around you; your thighs, too thick, your ankles, too fat, your feet, too small, your too full tummy and stretched out sides. You’re ok with your chest, and he is too, as long as you keep it covered for every other man, and uncovered for him. Your gaze moves up to your arms, and then your inner eye caresses your face. You stop yourself.

You know that it is more than that, more than the physical things. He chose you, didn’t he? He obviously could get past those flaws. But he won’t get past this, he can’t. He has told you so many times. You hear his voice inside: hard like a diamond, and just as glittery, charming and cold. You hear him. He never needs them, never wants them. That is why he has you, and you are forever.

“You will always be mine.”

All of the sudden you feel off, too unbalanced, exposed. With your toes, you twist the metal faucet, smooth and shiny. You cannot handle the feeling of the water anymore. You have a headache from the noise of the rushing, pounding water meeting the water. It was fast and overwhelming. But it was gone now.

You marvel for a split second at ease of shutting off that pain, and then stop watching all at once. You promised yourself “no pity”. You knew what you were biting into all of the months ago. You knew even then. You knew when you said “I will”, when you tied yourself to him, that ring as a reminder string on a special finger.

It is prefect on the outside, gold and strong and meticulous, the diamond perfectly cut, perfectly set. Like him, like he is on the outside. You wonder then, what is it like on the inside? Is it like him, too? The strange desire you have to cut open the ring, to run to the kitchen and find the meat cleaver and wield it toward your hand is so uncharted it scares you.

You are getting so awkward, so scary. You just aren’t you anymore. The parasite is demanding, you put your hands on the edge of the marble tub and hoist yourself up. You grab the bottle from the counter it is comfort in your hand. It is familiar. You realize that just the orange of the bottle has become a safeguard. You open the bottle slowly and slide back into the warmth. You slip the pill into your mouth and gently sink your head beneath the water. It flows into your ears and makes them tickle. It flows into your mouth and you swallow the small oval. The water tastes like water and soap and grime, not like orange, but what does it matter. You swallow again, and once more. You begin to panic for a second. You are still under the warmth. Your mouth breaks faith with the water and you breathe. In and out, in and …why?

Why isn’t it helping? You grab the bottle again and toss pills into your mouth, as quickly as you can, not at all slowly this time. You throw the pill bottle to the floor. “Stop” you yell in your mind. You need to not panic. You need to relax. You breathe. You cup the water with your hand to your mouth, once, twice, a third gulp. All the pills are gone now.

The edge is off. You feel hazy now, like yourself, more numb.

You slide back under the water, the bubbles tickling your nose as your breathe goes in and out. It is pulsing under the water. It is comfortable and so warm. You make your fingers move over your smooth legs, up to your too large abdomen. For the first time, you feel like it isn’t such a big deal. It doesn’t really matter all that much. You are comforted. You feel tired, you close your eyes, the pulsing slows, methodically, sounding further away and further still. You are thankful for the pills, you are thankful for the warmth; you are thankful for the rhythm under water.

You…you are more clearly at peace, more so then ever you are. You know this is right. You picture him, hard and diamond and smooth. Your hand pushes (or at least you think it might be pushing) on your belly for a tiny moment, one stretched out, far off rhythmic pulse. You feel sorry for it, and then you picture him, and you aren’t sorry anymore.

You let it go, and you let you go, you don’t hear it, the beat, anymore. You don’t feel you anymore. You succumb to it, slowly, fuzzy on the inside.