My head is in my hands and I am
sighing, crying. My mind is made of teeth, little white incisors and molars that
bite and draw blood in the parts of me that are carpeted corridors. Here, where sound
is squirreled away like treasure that you don’t tell about, blackened secrets are stained by fire and stained by her.
She peeled away my layers and tutted with a disapproving air floating around
her, sticky and dark. She came back from her white nurse uniform in jeans with
a long, sharp knife and I shrank forward both terrified and desperately
yearning, wanting to be perfect like she promised -
The cut was clean but it was long and wide and she dug inside me and found all
of my flaws prodding and exploring until she was unsatisfied enough for
satisfaction. She deliberated, her cogitating clockwork spinning faster as her
mind raced with the speed of determination and faulty networks, and she said,
“There
is
no
God.”
-
You used to break pencils when
you were angry.
I remember the snap as they broke and
a few splinters embedded themselves in your hands. Your face was white and your
fists clenched and your fear as obvious and hidden as anything could be. You
had broken ends in your pencil case for weeks, and I – I have a theory -
You used to cry when you were happy.
It’s not so unusual, but you used to cry so much that I’d ask you what was
wrong and you would have to explain, and then we would laugh together and sit
on the broken heater in the classroom singing stupid songs until the bell went,
talking about celebrities and thinking about the dichotomy of the world.
You used to laugh when you were sad.
I think it was because you didn’t like to talk about your feelings, so you
talked about everything else instead, and when it all became far too much the
laughter was a distraction, so you could cry with isolation watching mindful of
your fear. Isolation came to you once, trying to talk to you because she more
than anyone understood, but you fought her off with one hand, hiding your tears
with the other and punishing yourself with people.
-
And I tried to argue, present
statistics and facts and distract her with probability but she kept saying it
like an automaton – there is no god – until
I almost believed it simply for the sake of repetition before my rationality caught up
with me, out of breath, frayed and coming apart at the seams but still there,
stuffing falling to the floor.
-
And the teeth clicked together in my mind and tore apart her words and my world
like shredded fragments of memories or a white cloud savaged by the wind.
-
