Take a look at your
Mirror.
Take a seat in front of it and
Stare.
See who
Watches
You.
Lean in
Closer.
Examine every facet, every
Pore
Of their skin;
The depth of their
Eyes;
The creases on the
Surface.
Take a look at your
Mirror:
Who is staring back?
Your reflection
Is only as deep
As the surface of your
Skin.
You breathe it all in, the smoke burning your throat as you suck try to hold it in.
Exhale with a cough, you lean back on the couch, cool leather against your shoulders and eyes closed, waiting for that high to hit.
The lights are dim, one of them burnt out earlier you recall, and the room is blurry with smoke… Or maybe that’s just the drugs kicking in, you think. Your brain starts to slow, and a smile creeps onto your face as your eyelids grown heavy and you start to squint.
Where is my mind?
That Pixies song repeats in your head like a broken record, or just a song you can’t get out of your head, you guess. There are other people in the room, you think. You don’t know if you know them, but you know that they’re laughing, so something funny must be happening. You’re missing the joke, shit! You smile up where they’re standing, from, like, the most comfiest couch ever. They start to laugh more, but there is so much smoke you can barely see them anymore…
Where is my mind?
You feel your eyes flutter, trying to open, but when did they close? And you think you feel other things too, your hands are running all over your body… But you don’t have that many hands, do you?
With your feet on the air and your head on the ground…
There is an earthquake, or the building is collapsing… You don’t know, but your whole body is shaking, being jolted up and down, almost like you’re bouncing… And you can’t feel your hands but you can feel hands on your body, on your skin, but you were just wearing a shirt, weren’t you?
Way out in the water, see it swimming…
Things are starting to clear a little, you try to open your eyes, but you still can’t quite focus… There are other people in the room still, they’re all laughing, and someone is grunting… You feel someone there, and you start to feel your body again…
Where is my mind?
The smoke is gone, so are your clothes. Your thighs hurt but you don’t remember what you did to make them hurt, and you don’t know why you took your clothes off, but maybe it was hot? Your head hurts and you feel a little dizzy, a little nauseous, and your lips are dry.
Where is my mind?
You sit up, slowly at first, and throw your legs off the bed… When did you get to someone’s bedroom? Shit, you think, you don’t remember anything. What time is it? No one seems to be home, so you get down on your knees to find your clothes, realizing you might have gone on a walk through the woods? Because your shirt has a rip in it, though why your underwear is ripped is a mystery. You open the door and tiptoe out of the house, wracking your brain to figure out what you did last night.
With your feet on the air and your head on the ground…
Breathe, just breathe.
It’s what I tell myself every time my eyes start to burn with hot tears, and my fingers can’t seem to stay still for more than a split second.
Trying to quell the panic is like trying to stop an oncoming storm; you see it coming, and you know the only thing you can do is to sit tight and wait it out, but somehow you think if you stand strong and face it head on, it won’t completely obliterate you.
This heart will not collapse.
The song plays over and over, on repeat while my heart rate speeds up and I can’t control my limbs and everything turns into a shaky mess; it’s pure panic.
It came out of nowhere, the stupid thing, just snapped out of my brain like it won a game of hide-and-go-seek, and now gets to gloat that it won. It always wins, I can try to stop it but it always comes back to get me, to ruin me, to make me relapse.
I give up, I give in…
The song keeps going, calm music, trying to stop the shaking, trying vainly to get me to stop, to not do something I shouldn’t.
Am I doing this again?
Why did it have to be so hard? Why did there have to be things that trigger it, like a strobe light to a seizure, my mind snaps so easily that I don’t know what to do to make it easier on me; I don’t know how to see it coming. And the knife, god that stupid box cutter, always nearby; like my brain is tuned into its presence at all times, I can never lose it.
And I give up…
It’s in my hand and I don’t remember where it came from, I don’t remember picking it up.
I give in…
And suddenly there’s red, but I can’t see it clearly, because everything is shaky and wet; my eyes are stinging with tears and my fingers can’t stay still for a split second and all there is, is red.
We cannot go back…
I fiddled, somewhat nervously, with the fringe on the hem of my dress, waiting for him to come back into the room.
Barely daring to move around more than my shaking knees already were, I glanced around his apartment; old red carpet, covering most of the room I was standing in, with a giant white coffee table in the centre, made out of an old wooden door. A big brown leather couch was pushed against the far wall, oddly new-looking amongst his paraphernalia of vintage and dumpsite-finds. An old window frame hung over top of the couch, covered with pictures and magazine clippings of things too far away for me to read.
There was a thump from somewhere in the apartment, and suddenly music came on through speakers mounted on the walls, which I hadn’t noticed until then. I heard a creak from behind me, and spun around, fringes swaying, to see him standing in the doorway, holding out scotch glass, filled with amber liquid and ice cubes.
He smirked out at me, causing me to look over at the old window frame again.
“That’s a very nice… Thing,” I muttered, humiliated that I couldn’t have said anything more, intelligent-sounding. Goddamnit, really? Thing? Oh my…
He laughed, striding towards me and holding out the drink. “It’s an old thing my mom had in her basement,” he said, as I eyed the drink, not entirely sure what I was going to be drinking. “I decided it could look pretty neat here. That’s apple juice, by the way.”
He smirked as I realized he caught me sniffing the drink, certain I was about to ingest some form of old-man alcohol.
He looked up towards the speakers, suddenly, as the music switched from some mellow guitar song to, well, another mellow guitar song. Smiling down at me, he took the glass from my hand and set both his and mine down on the oversized coffee table.
“Dance with me,” he proclaimed, holding out my hand to him, as a man’s voice started to sing.
He started to laugh then, as I’m sure what was on my face was a look of blatant horror at the thought of dancing to probably the slowest song of existence. “Don’t give me that look, get over here!”
And with that he grabbed my arm and tried to spin me in a circle, resulting in me desperately trying to get my arm back, and tripping over myself and into his chest. He held up my wrist and grabbed my other hand, putting it on his shoulder, as he wrapped his arm around my waist. He slowly lowered my other arm, holding firmly to my hand, and grinned down at me.
He was too close to me, my cheeks were getting hot and I was suddenly overly conscious of my neckline. Swaying my hand and waist, we started moving around the room, real slow, just like the music.
All I could hear at first was the blood pounding through my ears, drowning out the mellow music and the most likely ragged attempts at breathing I was making. I had my eyes planted firmly on his chest, straight ahead, until I felt his breath on my neck as he started to whisper the words of the song into my ear.
Was it just something, that I made up for fun…
I finally caught my breath, and let it out as I let my eyes slide closed, relaxing to his voice and the music.
I saw you…
I slid my lids open again, looking up from his chest.
I saw you…
He looked down at me, with a small smile on his face.
Comin’ back to me…
It was the last thing I saw as I closed my eyes again and waited for his face to reach mine.
shelberino 