A little bit like a bad dream

Dear hearts,

I found this written on a scrunched up piece of paper dropped on the ground in the garden. If it is yours, let me know and I'll post it to you. If it is mine, then I am in trouble.

I am done with words. I have no use for the spoken word. I will sew my lips together to stop the words escaping. I will eat them up and swallow them before they get to my teeth. I will eat my self from the inside out. Making sure the howls and cries can never escape. I will bend myself in half and contort my stomach to keep the muscles from convulsing.

I will sew my eyelids shut as well. Just to be sure. Just to be sure the tears cannot escape and the looks of recrimination and betrayal stay trapped behind my retina. If I am lucky they will burn my retina's from the inside and stop the lightening strike of my stare. I will make sure all memory is sliced from my thighs with the sharpest of filleting knives. So sharp that I will not feel a thing. Just look down to see the sashimi slices of my muscle fall gracefully into pink layers at my feet.

I will take my head in my hands and pull at my hair until there are knots and nests that only wild birds would choose to roost in. They will peck at the back of my neck until they find the cord that runs down my back. The line that joins my head to my arse and up around to my cunt. They can suck away until there is no blood left. I have no use for these things now.

My hands. What to do with my hands? I will begin to bite at my nails. Tear at the strips of skin around my cuticles until there is blood, ragged and dirty. I will crack my knuckles until the arthritis begins to swell and the bones bulge. I don't want to see them again. I don't want to see them touching. Or tracing. Or holding. None of that matters now.

I am on my knees. Arranged into a shape that defies the contours of natural posture. I am twisted and broken. And happy to be so. I want everything that I am to be ugly and hidden. To be black and brown and smudged so that the shape cannot be seen.

No light. Just the absence of light.

No colour. Just the dirty drinkwater of storm filled puddles and the runoff of what might have been.

I am a howl. A rejection. A thing of small significance.

An indulgence.

Get up. Straighten up and open your eyes. Tear those stitches from your lids. Look in the mirror and face yourself.

Pull the threads from your lips and open your mouth wide. Suck in every last breath of opportunity and speak. Your truth.

Pull the birds from empty nests and shoo them away. Plug the holes and fill yourself from within. It won’t take long.

Crack your knuckles back into shape and articulate as you always have. Conduct your conversation. Skin grows back. Nails repair. The prints on your fingertips remain. Dip them in ink and remember.

Wipe that smudge from your face and pull discipline from your belly.

Shut up and start walking. Home.


Apologies Dear hearts.

I don’t know what came over me.

Miss Mich.