When he is at his most fragile,
when he is at his breaking point,
he must always remember:
if he is broken,
he is good for little more
than cutting anyone
who reaches out to him.
If he is to be saved,
if he is to save himself,
He will have to become
safety glass,
and shatter
in predictable ways,
less slivering,
more crumbling.
He will have to break
without wearing anyone else’s blood;
there is enough on his hands,
as is.
She was the kind of girl who took pictures of parts of herself. Her eyes. Her lips. The curve where her neck met her shoulder. She obsessed about all of these tiny shards of herself, finding perfection in only three square inches at a time, and hated everything else. If she could have, she would have cut those parts of herself, those perfect parts, all off the rest of her horrible body, and pieced herself back together, I think she would have. So what if she ended up looking a bit like a Picasso come to life? She would display only those perfect bits of herself, because she could not imagine that the whole of herself was something worth loving. Too fat. Too pale. Too blemished. An errant hair here, a pimple there, a scar here, a bruise there. Flaws she never noticed on anyone else, but were obviously so glaring on her own body that she might as well immolate herself rather than be seen as a whole being in public.
She took these pictures, these cutouts, and plastered them all over the world, spewing words out, desperate for people to read them, wanting to connect with someone, with anyone. Hoping for someone to read them and say “I understand. This is me. This is what I have been trying to say my whole life, too. I understand you, and you understand me.”
Because then, maybe, somehow, that person would be able, would be strong enough, to see her for the whole creature she was, instead of just her fingertips, just her hair, just her apple cheeks.
Maybe they could teach her to navigate the murky waters of loving one’s self, curl their hand in hers and whisper that it would be okay, that she was not alone.
She won’t listen to me, but if I could put my hand in hers, if she would let me, I would let her know she doesn’t have to love herself in only 3 inches at a time — that I love her, that I have loved her since the moment I saw her, and I will love her forever — that she’ll never be alone again.
Slogging through
an eternal winter of the mind,
fingers and heart numb,
eyelids heavy
from frost and self hate.
The world is perpetually dark,
with a pale, weakling sun,
who never quite comes above the horizon,
circling around
the perimeter of the waking world.
Everything is dim.
Everything is heavy.
Welcome home.
Every day was the same, now. At first, she’d refused to move, to eat, to anything. She resented having to go to the bathroom. She would all but bare her teeth at anyone who got too close. As time went on, a schedule grew up around the facts that were, for the moment, immovable.
This was the way things were.
She would get up at a patently unreasonable hour and pick up all the newspapers, print the overnight newsfeeds, grab any new tabloids or magazines that seemed relevant, get a pack of smokes, two coffees, a greasy paper bag of breakfast things that would stop someone’s heart just from looking at it.
She would sit in the same chair, chewing on a pencil, holding a cigarette in one hand, a pen in the other, making notes. She stayed, working, as long as she thought she could, before she had to go out and make money. ‘Active panhandling,’ she had called it. ‘What, like busking?’ he had once asked. His scorn, however playful, had been scalding. She would dump the wallets and cards in different locations, busing around the various boroughs so she wasn’t ever in one location for too long. Not many people carried cash anymore; it wasn’t as easy as it used to be. Sometimes it was watches, jewelry, full-on purses. She had more than one fence now — she’d had to, after the police picked up her favorite on a long-ago pedo charge.
If it hadn’t been for him, she wouldn’t have been trying so hard; shelters sucked, and the world was cold in winter, but she wouldn’t have had to keep up with rent and utilities. She couldn’t leave the place to nothing — what if he –? What if?
When she scraped enough for the day, she would go back, exhausted and drained, and she’d shower, and maybe manage to eat, but whatever the state of things, she was always back at the same time, at the same place.
It was the same feeling she got — a mix of dread and hope, a weird butterfly feeling, warm and queasy, wonderful and awful all at once — every time she came in, every time she saw him. She sat next to him and stared at him, and stared at the machines, and the IV, and the thin blankets, and his pale skin, and the scruff at his lip and jaw, and the tousled hair, and the closed eyes.
She stripped off one of her gloves and laid her hand next to his, fingertips barely touching.
Except for the string of fiery invective aimed at an errant cabbie who barely missed her coming around a corner a few weeks ago, she hadn’t spoken in three months.
Didn’t look like it was going to change any time soon.
She curled her fingers around his and laid her head on the edge of the bed, watching him.
She wasn’t much, but she was loyal.
This was the way things were.
“You set?” His too-blue eyes watched her, then looked away before she could catch his gaze. Before she could see.
She had nodded, but then her eyes were searching his face. Why won’t you look at me? What the fuck is going on?
“Don’t look set,” he snaps gruffly.
“I’m fucking set,” she hissed back.
He grunted, shrugging, and stepped back.
She turned to go. “What if I’m not good enough?” She had already begun walking, but now she was looking back over her shoulder at him. “What if I fuck it up?” she asked, terror plain on her face, if only for one split second.
He wanted, desperately, to go to her. To cup her face in his hands and kiss her, quiet her, comfort her. It was a raw, awful feeling, and he hoped the sneer covered it. His hands clenched in his pockets, and his jaw tensed. “Then you do what needs doing.” The cigarette at his lips clouded his face in bluegrey smoke, and he turned, walking away. Now wasn’t the time for coddling. Even so, he could not stop himself from looking back, from watching her go.
He looked back, and felt both triumphant and hollow to see that she did not.
