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.