Trigger Warning: Trauma, Self harm, Intimate Partner Violence
To slice open your life you will need to negotiate the connection speed first.
Try one device, and then another, and then a different one.
Shout “Can you hear me?”
And “Your picture froze.”
And “Sorry my headphones jammed.”
And then, silence. The slight tremor in your left hand as you hold the razor, ready.
You start with tiny cuts. The Insomnia, the fog. The flash of poison in your heart. The incessant bile that you keep pushing down to your gut. Then, the emptiness. Why does the world get to function when you can’t?
Little fissures crackle on your skin. White, translucent lines.
You take a deep breath and open your palm to the world. The fingers, pointing at your silly, wet face. The Abondonment. Uncombed hair. The bathroom door locked from the inside for hours. The Rise, the Fall, again.
Witness the blooming blood. Dots, blobs, patches, streaks.
The slap across your cheek. Bones at your wrist. All the times the ‘no’ dried in your throat. The pills. The threats. The Fall, the Rise again.
The blood on the wrist is a river as your head smashes against the wall. As fingers close on your throat and your left knee hits the gravel.
And now you are pixels, bleeding without a sound. It’s in your eyes now, in your ears. The blood is burning, the blood is freezing.
When did you freeze? Before the slap, or after? You take a deep breath and a good look. The cut is deep enough.
“Yes doctor, let me repeat…”
Accompanying image is Memory by Rene Magritte. It has been sourced from WikiArt under fair use.
In Other Words 