amelia schmidt

from hell

Mon, 23 May 2011 05:50:20 -0400

I mean really, why would being naked make him bite me? If anything, you’d think that being naked and free, reflecting the monkey’s nudity, all of us god’s fair children frolicking under the glorious sunlight – you think it’d make him feel more at peace with me, more connected? Yeah, well.

I never met god, but I met Jesus. He seemed like a reasonable guy. He told me that I’d done some things that weren’t right, and I guess that was true, I mean, he had all the facts straight. But he told me that he was giving me another chance because the rapture was happening pretty soon and if I learnt how to straighten up and fly straight before that point and repented the shit out of things then I’d be alright. I mean, he didn’t say it quite like that but you get the gist.

Anyway, he explained to me that what no-one tells you is that after you die, Jesus does his judgment thing and he decides if you’re worthy or not, but you get to see heaven either way. The thing is, if you’re not worthy, he shows you heaven, and part of hell is knowing that you can never, ever go there. And when you go to heaven briefly, all your friends are there, and all the animals are there, and your friends are lying in the pale sunlight on the soft, cool grass with some deer and a rabbit and some kittens and scorpions and you try to call out to them but they’ve forgotten about you and they don’t recognize your face and they can’t understand what you’re saying and they just laugh happily to each other like schoolgirls and then you go to hell.

The first thing about hell is that it’s not hot. People are all, ‘Hell is really hot, fire and brimstone, inferno, red things, etcetera’ but hell is actually much worse than that. When you get there, you need a jacket, and then after five minutes, you have to take your jacket off. Then it starts to rain, really hard, like needles, and then the wind picks up, and five minutes later you’re sweating again. And it just goes on like that. So you never know how to dress, you know?

And you’ve only got what you brought with you anyway, which isn’t really much, because it’s the spiritual world and you get a pretty tight limit and because it’s hell, the clothes that you’ve got are actually the clothes you recklessly bought in your earthly life that you’ve never really worn properly and always felt awkward in, so the jacket’s sleeves are too small and the pants are scratchy and you’re wearing a novelty hat and also a shawl you once bought in Thailand. All at once. Until it gets hot again, and you have strip down to nothing. But then you have to figure out where to put your clothes and everywhere is covered in a weird kind of goop that smells a bit strange, so soon your clothes get pretty goopy.

The other thing about hell is the apparent rationing of apostrophes. And everyone splits infinitives and no-one knows how to use a semicolon. Semicolons don’t actually exist in hell. But that’s not even the worst bit because the worst bit is that you’re the only person who knows the rules, and everyone else is completely convinced that they’re totally correct and there’s nothing you can do to change their minds. And all of the available surfaces – of which there are many, because hell is very cluttered with things – are covered in all the great novels of the world which are all written with the wrong apostrophes and split infinitives and no semicolons and someone is reading them aloud and pronouncing hyperbole, nuclear and library wrong every single time.

A lot of people think that hell is repetition, a bird eats your liver, Chinese water torture whatever, but actually repetition is kind of only part of it. In hell I think repetition would be relatively OK but what actually happens is that one part of your back is really itchy and this guy comes over and he scratches your back in one spot which isn’t quite the right spot, and then he just stops. Forever. He will never scratch the itchy spot. And it never stops itching. And every now and then they show you a video of him scratching your back, to remind you about it.

Because in hell you crave everything that you want, and none of it exists anymore. In hell there is no soft cheese, or vegemite, or toast, or hits of the ‘80s, or nailclippers or hot showers or butter or salt or taxis or two dollar coins or plastic bags without holes. There are no tissues or drinks or cigarettes or painkillers. There are no friends’ shoulders or long-awaited telephone calls or good test results or childhood toys, or warm towels or matching socks or unexpired buspasses or final puzzle pieces. There are no teenage bedrooms or memories of your parents. There are no pay rises or sick days. There are no smiles or hugs or kisses or caresses or hand-holding or gentle touches or sex or unbroken hearts.

But there are lots of pieces of paper, everywhere, and they’re ridiculously thin, and you stoop down to pick them up - and for some reason they’re not covered in the slime and they don’t even stick to it - and you try to hold them and read the really, really faint text that is written on all of them, but every time you pick up a piece of this ridiculously delicate paper, it slides out of your hand, and you can almost see what it says but you never quite manage to read it because the paper is too thin and light and mischievous and it flies away from you, and you never, ever know it but on every single piece of paper there are words written on it that will fill you with hope and happiness and warmth and completeness and beauty and truth.

And that is what I found I had taken back with me to the world, to help me for the rapture, one of those pieces of paper in the pocket of a pair of jeans I couldn’t have been wearing when I went to heaven, because I was naked, with the monkey, remember? But it was in there, somehow. But I was too afraid to read it because I wasn’t sure and I almost completely forgot about it until I remembered it and opened it, which is how I know, but by then it was too late.

Film Review: Precious

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 23:36:45 -0400

Film Review: Precious:

Review of the film ‘Precious’ as published in The Brag Magazine.

Otoliths Issue Thirteen

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 23:35:06 -0400

Otoliths Issue Thirteen:

Buy Otoliths Issue Thirteen, which contains contains work by Adam Fieled, Amelia Schmidt, Anne Gorrick, Francis Raven, Bob Heman, Jeff Harrison, Michael K. White, Jeff Encke, Geof Huth & Tom Beckett, Sam Langer, pd mallamo, Charles Freeland, Daniel f Bradley & Mike Cannell, Mark Cunningham, R. L. Swihart, Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, Paul Siegell, Marcia Arrieta, Martin Edmond, Adam Strauss, Michael Caylo-Baradi, Philip Byron Oakes, James Belflower & Anne Heide & J. Michael Martinez, J. D. Nelson, Luca Penne, Bobbi Lurie, John Moore Williams, Thomas Fink, Thomas Fink & Maya Diablo Mason, Kirk Marshall, Dan Raphael, Raymond Farr, Zach Bucher, Sheila E. Murphy, Tom Beckett interviewing Alex Gildzen, Glenn R. Frantz, Bill Drennan, Travis Macdonald, Tom Taylor, Lisa Ciccarello, Andy Martrich, F. J. Bergmann, Alyson Torns, Ashley Capes, Joe Balaz, Lars Palm, & Felino Soriano.

Unremarkable on Radio National read by Toby Schmitz

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 23:34:15 -0400

Unremarkable on Radio National read by Toby Schmitz:

You can download the version of Unremarkable recorded at Radio National for the City Nights project. It’s read by STC actor Toby Schmitz.

some fictions

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:36:00 -0500

some fictions are true, she says,

with a grin like a magician. not all of them,

she says, but some are. for example,

she says, pointing to a wolf wearing

the clothes of an old lady, asleep in a single bed,

for example, she says, this is true. also this,

she says, drawing my attention to

a young man leaning over a sleeping girl,

kissing her, softly waking her. that is also true,

she says. and of course this, she says, gesturing

to a girl in a beautiful ball-gown, big watery eyes

fixed on the second hand of a clock, skirts

bunched anxiously in her hands. of course

that one is true, she says, with a wry laugh.

what about – but she cuts me off,

laughing, no, no. that one is all made up.

and the one about the long hair, that’s

all lies too. it’s the one’s you don’t expect. i mean

this one, she says, climbing up a few steps

so we can see, far off, a knight in shining armour,

his steed peacefully nibbling grass

in dappled sunlight, this is half true. and this,

she says, waving her arm towards a couple

asleep under a sheet, bodies locked together

like held hands, this is true. she shows me

a woman quietly crying to herself

on a sidewalk in gentle rain, this is true.

she shows me a child lost

in a supermarket, this too is true.

she shows me a man walking

away without looking back, his face

all taut like cling wrap, this is true. i nod.

a group of teenagers jump off a cliff

and in to the ocean, screaming wildly,

thin like streamers, this is true.

i nod. a photograph of someone’s parents,

younger, more in love, i nod,

a woman waiting at the traffic lights, her eyes closed,

i nod, a body caught before it hits the ground, i nod,

a man with his palms and forehead pressed

to a concrete wall, breathing, i nod, i nod,

this is true, this is true, this is true.

Inside Brother's Stomach

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:33:44 -0500

Inside brother’s stomach
I am curled up twice over.

Intertwined intestines,
knees knock elbows.
My fingernails have grown long and textured
like twigs.

Between his ribs and spleen
I rest my head, and when I blink
he says he feels butterflies.

Inside brother’s stomach
I close my eyes and hold on
from the inside.

An ache you’ve ignored:

Twin, my other,
I have always loved you.

(2008)

Saturn

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:13:00 -0500

Lover, tonight I am Saturn

And you my circling rings

Saturnine, I find things tiring

Uninspiring, your body in

some languid repose

and mine –

dull, tonight, and I’m distracted by the stars.

Listen, I’m not worth running rings round

Tonight I’m not even solid.

Mechanical

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:00:00 -0500

This is how it works:
From underneath, the hook grabs the eye
And pulls the chain through the loop.
This forces the small, rough parts to collide and spark,
Thereby starting the pistons which
Drive the small motor which
Powers the weaving device that smoothly creates a textile
That wraps around the wheel-edge and creates a strong, tight canvas
On to which the magnifying glass, at only this certain time, captures the rays of sun
And concentrates them to burn through the fabric
Which then, torn, springs open with such force that
A small gong is hit by a nearby-attatched mallet
Which is just enough vibration to move the tiny, balancing pyramid of miniature wine glasses
That shatter directly on to a mortar and pestle (mechanised)
Which then grinds the glass down to roughly the consistency
Of smooth, soft sand
Which then is poured through a thin vein of tube
To trickle on to and weigh down one side of the see-sawing scale,
Which pulls down and thus also pulls the hook,
Which grabs the eye and pulls the chain to begin again this elaborate machine
That I have built because I do not know how to build love,
And in trying I have built this, for you, instead.

Metropolitan

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 02:12:44 -0500

This city no longer electrifies me. Trains are just side-winding skyscrapers, repeated like grey suits on a grey sidewalk. There used to be shocks in the skids and collisions – now I’m biting on powerlines for the jolt that I need. Rolling traffic over my toes to make sure I feel it go past. Each zip code refuses me. I know the rhythms of traffic lights like my mother’s heartbeat and your face is one I’ve seen a million times before.

Moving

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 02:06:00 -0500

When I said I needed help moving

I was talking about boxes

But also your hands and my hips.

Stay

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 02:05:00 -0500

The sex was incidental, compared to what happened next. Compared to what happened when I put on my clothes and said I was going to leave, and he said with his hands, stay. He stroked my hair and the feeling of his palm on my forehead said, stay. He ran his fingers across my arms, down my back, behind my ears, over my knuckles, as if he might only have this chance to touch these parts of me, as if this might be the last time and he would have to remember it all in case I disappeared and he had to reconstruct me, and his fingers running across my electric skin said, stay.

101 word love story

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 02:03:00 -0500

It’s a sunny day when I rear-end your car and you come out to meet me to get my details. I notice that you delicately brush my hand for just a touch too long and as I write down my name and number on the receipt for dry cleaning you hand me I can feel you staring at me, at my hands, at my face, my undone shoelaces, and I can smell fresh petrol that has accidentally splashed on you. I nervously misspell my own name and give you the paper. You say, “I’m glad we ran in to each other.”

Interview with Voiceworks Magazine

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:59:57 -0500

Interview with Voiceworks Magazine

Shore 2

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:57:52 -0500

I took a dive under and through a wave, arching my back as I exploded at the top of it and flew backwards, falling on to its crest as it broke beneath me. The wave crashed in to the shore and tickled the dry sand, and then rushed back towards me.

As I touched my feet to the sand I felt my ankles dragging forward, water hands wrapped around them and tugging. The wave disappeared back to sea, to wander back in to the faraway parts of the ocean, to bounce off another shoreline and in to another girl’s arms.

Shore

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:57:22 -0500

She comes out of the ocean and later lays her head on his chest, her hair all fanned out across it. Her skin tastes salty from sea, and sweat, and she listens to his chest like a conch, for the sounds of waves breaking or softer, a heartbeat.

Through The Clock's Workings

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:53:33 -0500

Through The Clock's Workings:

You can download a story I wrote for this anthology in pdf.

I wanted to ask you

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:28:00 -0400

It was like we were slowly just depositing little tiny bits of feelings in to each other, like we were both garbage bins that the other walked past on the way to work. Maybe they were even facing each other on opposite sides of the road. And every day, one little bus ticket was put in there. But eventually, if somehow you could separate all the bus tickets that you had put inside the bin and put them in a pile, you’d see that after a few months, the pile would be fairly large. And I thought that maybe you’d look at it and be proud and happy, but I think you saw it in me, and you weren’t proud, you were scared. So you just walked away, took a new route to work, put your bus tickets in another bin, or maybe just on the side of the road. I wanted to ask you, What do I do with it? All of this feeling that you have left inside of me, what do I do with it? Where does it go? What happens to it when it is finished?

Unravelled

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:25:00 -0400

Dear Mrs Livingstone,

I am writing to you to express my deepest and most sincere apologies in regards to your son, Liam, whom I was very close to and spent a lot of time with. Obviously not as close to him as you were, or anywhere near as much time as you spent with him, but enough, you know, to feel like we had some sort of connection and that I could judge him to be a wonderful person. And by that I don’t mean that I’m judgmental and that I meant to weight up his personality traits to see if he was worth of my time and effort – I mean it in the most natural, human way, in the completely non-offensive and sensitive way. Point is, he was lovely, and we got on well.

I’m sure you’re very upset. The loss of a child is debilitating and, well, terrible, I’d imagine, not having children of my own. I can’t pretend to understand what you’re going through as a mother. I do feel, though, that it is only fair of me to explain to you the events of last night, so you have some idea of how we ended up like this.

You see, I had invited Liam over to my house as he had mentioned previously that he wasn’t feeling brilliant, emotionally. As you know, he’s been having trouble at work, with the re-organisation of his level and the promotion of some of his co-workers. I really don’t understand much about that, because I’m not in an office job, but suffice to say, he was feeling down, and I invited him over for a few drinks and some light-hearted conversation. He came with a bottle of wine and we ate Thai food. We enjoyed the wine and the noodles and had wonderful conversation.

After eating, we got up and moved into the living room with the couches. Upon sitting down, Liam noticed a stray thread from his jumper – just off the sleeve. Well, perhaps that is not quite accurate: I noticed Liam playing with a stray thread from the sleeve of his jumper, which he said (with a laugh) had been “Rebelliously trying to run off with his clothing for most of the day.” Of course I was unsure at the time, but in retrospect I swear I saw a glimmer of some kind of melancholy in his eye, or some kind of wisdom. At that moment, however, it seemed nothing more than a momentary pause, and I disregarded it.

It’s difficult to say exactly what happened next. He kissed me, there was a changing of couch positions, another kiss. You probably don’t need to know this, I know. I’m sorry – anyway, the point is, Liam got up to get himself a drink, and I noticed, after he had gone to the next room, that there was a thread caught on the couch and leading after him into the kitchen, as if it were a perfect record of his movements, or perhaps a lure. A thin, coloured, baited line, - waiting for me to follow it to its ultimate end. I sighed and followed him into the kitchen, where I found him leaning against a bench with his drink, with one and a half jumper sleeves. I pointed to his left arm. Liam shrugged nonchalantly – it was nothing. He was leaning back against the kitchen-top, sipping from his glass, with his exposed elbow leant on the granite. He seemed to stare off into the near distance a little, as if he weren’t entirely focussed on his immediate surroundings. He seemed vague and disinterested, really, but in a whimsical, endearing way.

I grinned. He looked silly with one and a half arms so I grabbed the thread, close to him, and ran back into the living room. You see, I had figured that if the jumper was already so far gone, it wouldn’t matter me playing with the rest of it.

Imagining the garment unravelling fast with my every step, I tugged the string and skipped into the hallway, which I bounced down and on into the bathroom, wrapping the never-ending thread around everything fixed I could find: doorknobs, lights, chairs, tables. I could hear Liam’s laughs echoing through the house. I was giggling too, and perhaps a little tipsy, and in under five minutes, I was back in the living room, breathing heavily. I called to Liam then, and realised that the kitchen was eerily silent. I felt more than a little drunk by this stage.

Assuming that he’d decided to turn our game into hide-and-seek, and vaguely worried that he might spring up behind me to get revenge for me unravelling his jumper, I tiptoed towards the kitchen door, without entering. As I stood behind the half-open door, absent-mindedly pulling on the string, I called out Liam’s name, wondering where he could have gone (to the bathroom perhaps? It crossed my mind). Deciding it was safe, I ventured into the kitchen quietly, to find it empty, but for some coloured threads draped over the handles of the drawers and leading out the other door of the kitchen which also leads onto the hallway.

Following the thread, like a child following a trail of Easter eggs, like a sniffer dog after a scent, I let the thread trickle through my fingers without grabbing a hold of it or collecting it. For an hour, Mrs Livingstone, I traced this string around my house, out my front door and delicately down my front steps, the driveway and down the road, one block, two blocks (birds whistling, cars passing) and into the park (almost run over for not concentrating or stopping at roadsides), around trees, across the oval, under another tree and around a beautiful willow tree, where the moonlight illuminated the string which was, I noticed, no longer the same colour as Liam’s jumper (red).

I was very confused. In my hands I held the string and Liam was nowhere to be found – I was alone in the park, late at night – but let me assure you, Mrs Livingstone, my neighbourhood is incredibly safe. There has not been one incident here as long as I’ve known. I was entirely fine, and not really very worried about myself – only about Liam. Of course, I resumed following the string, which (unsurprisingly) led back to my house, in the front door again (I had left it unlocked) and back to the lounge. And there, Mrs Livingstone, you must believe me, though I hardly believe it myself – there the string ended, not in a scissor-chopped fray, but in a small rounded nub, like a bellybutton. I held the ending delicately, and called for Liam again, no response.

I was tired and confused. For hours I searched the house, you must understand, and found nothing except for the mess of threads. Not knowing what to do, and partly panicking, I decided to gather them up. Starting with the nub, I carefully wound the threads around my arm and shoulder like an electrical cord, retracing my steps around the house, back out to the park (it was cold then) and returning to the house, the hall, the bathroom, the kitchen – where it became more familiar, a record of my own silly expedition. Finally, as the sun rose closer to the underside of the horizon, staining the sky mildly pink like a blue sheet washed with reds, I reached the fraying loose end that we began with. I was wearing the giant, heavy loop of thread, so large now that I stooped to carry it to the lounge, where I reverentially laid it down like a wreath, or a sleeping child. And there, I collapsed.

I woke up hours later, some time in the afternoon. In the daylight I noticed that the loops of thread were of many different colours and shades of pinks, browns, blacks, yellows, purples, blues, whites and reds.

It is unfair of me to expect you to accept this letter easily or in good spirits, but I can only swear that every word I write is in honesty and sympathy. I would not deceive you, and have no reason to. I feel guilty, responsible, for this, as if I should have somehow realised what was happening. I miss Liam, and I have little idea what to do from here.

I am sorry for unravelling your son, Mrs Livingstone, and I’m giving you the thread in the hope that you, if anyone, can maybe find some way of re-threading him. I am no weaver of threads.

Best of luck, sympathies, regrets, and apologies.

Ways I have learnt about loss

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:23:00 -0400

The first and last time

In my memory, it is all teal and off-white, ugly paintings and the smell of disinfectant. It was a stupidly sunny day, and I had come to visit her, because she was dying. We all knew it, so it was only decent to come and see her, before we couldn’t anymore. Seeing my grandmother had always been a chore, at least according to my mother.

At her apartment, which was about a block away from the unit she used to live in, I was always a child, eating biscuits or chewy fruit-shaped lollies, sometimes sitting down for cake that she had made. I’d brush the light green velvet coloured couches with my fingers, drawing lines as I touched the material in different directions. I’d listen to stories about things my parents didn’t want to hear, explore drawers in desks secretly while they talked. When I was younger, I remember playing in the park that we could always see out of the window, sliding down the hills on pieces of cardboard boxes, getting grass stains on my jeans.

When she looked at me, the oxygen no longer reaching her brain, and asked me, anyone, to call the police, delirious and confused, I was aware that I did not know her at all. I was older now but suddenly a child again, with my mother and her sister, my aunt, three of us standing around the hospital bed, after deciding to turn off life support. I was part of the decision, but I was a stranger to death, and I was my mother’s daughter; the daughter of her daughter. I was scared of this woman who I had never seen before, her hair no longer permed, parts stuck sweaty to her wrinkled forehead, no makeup, not offering me a cup of tea or a biscuit, dressed only in a badly fitted hospital gown.

When she died, the rest of everything was harder to commit to memory. Her funeral is a cartoon, a film re-enactment in my mind. I see myself watching my father shovel a bit of dirt on to the top of a coffin. The headstone wasn’t ready yet; we walked away from a bare grave. I don’t think I cried. It was the last time the whole family had been together and the first time I’d ever seen someone die.

The hardest thing

I’d never broken up with anyone before, never in any serious way. I had been talking to strangers about it for more than a week, finding anyone at any university table and asking them to listen. Telling them about how awful he was, how unhappy I was, how things were falling apart, while they politely sipped take-away coffees and listened for entertainment’s sake. “I’m going to break up with him,” I’d proclaim, more to myself than to them, as if saying it made it impossible to back down from.

It was my birthday and we had to go to a party around the corner from his apartment. When I went in to his bedroom full of the words I was going to say, he had already put all my books and things in a pile, like he somehow knew. It was the saddest pile of books I’d ever seen. I cried when I told him that we couldn’t keep hurting each other, that I loved him and wanted to be his friend, but that I couldn’t be his lover. We went to the party and his father told me how happy he was that I was in his son’s life, that I had made things better for them both. I was so ashamed. I talked to people I didn’t know about nothing, and outside the city lights were shining on the water of the harbour in no particular way, in the same way they had been shining when we met, across the bay.

Afterwards, he left me messages. On my phone, email. He left me a letter on my doorstep with the birthday present he couldn’t give me in person. I stood on the doorstep and waited, walked up the driveway and looked up and down the street, looking desperately for his car, his back disappearing around a corner. I held the gifts he’d bought for me a few days before, not knowing that I’d do what I did, but they were foreign objects, things I could not love. I couldn’t read the book but I read his letter and cried for hours. I don’t know what I did with it – it’s been a few years but I’m still too afraid to look for it.

You keep re-living the beautiful things: the walk we took in the golf course, through the park, when the aeroplanes were flying low and breaking the sound barrier, when I lay down on the grass. I can’t remember the other things now, I suppose they fade away. I remember thinking that no-one would ever love me as much as he did. I read all of his letters over and over again until I felt I could never write another word. His handwriting was spidery and tiny - I wanted to hide away in the curves of his alphabet and stay there until everything was okay again.

Expectations

When our cat Tripod got cancer on her nose, we all knew eventually that it was the beginning of the end. She was called Tripod because she had three legs. She had no tail, as well, but that was part of her breed. The little sore underneath her nose eventually grew to cover a fair part of her face. I don’t remember ever feeling disgusted by it, just disappointed that we were so powerless against this sore that was going to take our little friend away.

She wanted to keep sitting on our laps as her body slowly shut down over the months. We’d have to keep a tattered yellow towel under her, and towards the end, in her bed. Eventually she staggered, unable to walk. She was so quiet and tiny underneath the table, a little black creature silhouetted against a suburban patterned carpet. A little shadow. We put her down. I couldn’t watch it happen, and when I saw her limp body, tiny and black, smaller than ever before, she wasn’t my cat anymore.

Problems

In high school, we were all upset but Naomi’s problems were rougher, more dangerous. Naomi’s problems had corners and edges while ours were still amorphous shapes that we quietly stepped around, pushed in to the back of our minds and replaced with study notes.

We shared a locker. We shared a lot more than a locker, too. We’d been very close ever since we met in Year Seven, thrown together by circumstance in a new school, two awkward girls with bad clothes and legs and arms we didn’t know what to do with. She’d go in and out of my life, finding a new best friend for a few months, then coming back. We’d skip maths and sit on milk crates in an alleyway with coffee and cigarettes. So when she started to cut her arms and legs up, I wondered vaguely where she had thought that idea up. We all kind of hated her for it for a while. How dare she do such a thing, demand our attention so obviously.

Soon enough it was old news and no-one was angry anymore. Most people wrote her off, turned it in to a sick joke. I was worried then, and upset. I’d look at her arms, criss-crossed like nothing I’d ever seen before, scar upon scar upon scar, red raw and bleeding. Then it began on her ankles, half covered in navy-blue school socks.

She became more and more distant. I knew that I couldn’t force her to stop, as much as every part of me wanted to. I knew that I had to let her fix this, that as much as I loved her, her body was her body and I had no rights over it. Every time I looked at her skin I’d feel something drop inside me, this feeling that I had failed her so badly as a friend. I conceded to let her know that I cared about her and that I had put some bandages, bandaids and disinfectant in our locker for her. Every day I’d open the locker and see my little medical stash, unused, pathetic in the empty space that I could no longer even keep books in. It was like it was haunted. I’m not sure if either of us really used it after that.

Eventually she just wasn’t doing it anymore. I don’t really remember a moment where she stopped. There were other parts of her, deeper, darker parts, that I never knew about, that she still won’t talk about very much. With her it always seems to be just the tip of the iceberg. Her arms are still scarred, but the scars are like texture now, and slowly seem to be fading away, just little bumps under my fingertips.

Recurring dream

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:23:00 -0400

I have this recurring dream that you come to me and you are crying, as if everything in the world has pressed down on you and around you like a squeezing hand so hard that you are leaking tears. You look at me with big, shining eyes and your wet face is salty like you have just been thrown out of the ocean. I ask you what is the matter, naturally, and you can do nothing but choke your voice down and shake your head, little fountains spilling out in to the air as your face moves.

I sigh and stroke your hair. What can I do? Your shoulders shake up and down in bursts and spurts, and I struggle to hold myself back from pressing you to the ground to stop your shivers.

I can see a little of myself in the bathroom mirror.