Sometimes I feel very disconnected from my hands. Even as I type this, it feels as though the hands that fly across the keyboard belong to an adolescent. Stubby fingers and undefined bones moving choppily under skin I can hardly reconcile as my own. These small hands lack the grace and elegance I feel I carry. It feels as though someone has punished their wayward child for sticking grubby fingers into sticky cookie jars and cut them off. It feels as though someone has punished me and stuck those same disproportioned, short-fingered hands where mine used to be.
There is a room which exists only in my dreams and some nights I chug Ny-Quill and choke down Benadryl in attempts to make it there. Sunday seeps out of me and fatigue sits down at the table and orders herself a tinto de verano. I remember when I was a child I saw a scene on T.V. where someone’s father died. And they did not find his body until the morning after. And the cigarette he had lit smoked itself to the filter after he took his last breath. A pillar of ash in a dead man’s hand. That’s how I feel sometimes. I wrote that in my diary and my brother read it and then texted me off of his Apple Watch asking if I was ok. He said we all feel like that sometimes. I hope to God he was lying. Those feelings should be reserved for horrid people the likes of which I hope he will never meet. Aside from me, of course. And our father.
My sister told me I have a club foot, by which she meant one of my feet always wants to be at the club. Itching to hit the dance floor and drink too much and sway my hips and body in an unseemly rhythm which, if studied, resembles the disembodied jolting of a headless snake. Someone pisses me off, I lose my temper. Don’t piss me off. I lose my temper, I find it again, I keep it better. Is this making any sense? I say again, don’t piss me off. Is catharsis found in revenge, or in control? Delegating people, left, right and center. Yes. I think this is what I was looking for the whole time.
Somebody is playing a piano or a harp. I don’t know which one but they are playing it like they have always played it and also somehow like it is the first day they’ve seen such an instrument. The Spanish Tragedy. I love a good Tragedy. Their first date was when he gets hanged and stabbed a hundred times. Sophocles. A closet drama. My life is a closet drama, better read than acted. Sorry, better read than lived. A revenge tragedy. Revenge is all about pride. I want my order of things to be the order of things. Is that so wrong? My understanding of morality ought to be the enactment of the law. Someone kills herself. Someone gets stabbed. Everyone dies at the end. Everyone always dies at the end. Better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. Rubbish. Such rubbish. Better to have never known never loved and never lost. Ignorance. Bliss.
Cranberry juice. The constant presence of a raging UTI. A looming infection. A torrid affair. Is my only friend this UTI? Is it me and this eternal UTI against the world? I’m sad. I’m happy. My urethra is burning. I’m sad again. I’m sitting on the floor of my shower and pretending I’m a mermaid. It’s not going so well, as I’m sure you can guess. My eyes are dead, my pupils are huge. He says he doesn’t recognize me when I slip into this state. Hold on, let me slip into something more comfortable. Less comfortable. This satin slip of a dress. This silky slip of mental despair. You can only pick one. Take your pick, of one, and you get to have it for a month or so. Or longer. Maybe shorter. Study a brain scan, pick apart the differences. I’m literally Dr. House except minus the Vicodin. God, why do I not have any Vicodin. Maybe if I act like I’m in enough pain my psychiatrist will prescribe me some. Maybe if someone stabs me I’ll be in enough pain that feeling this way will make some type of sense. But I probably shouldn’t mention that last part to my psychiatrist. Only if we are discussing the Spanish Tragedy and it comes up maybe. Good old Dr. [REDACTED]. Always in my corner, except when I need a diagnostic letter to get accommodations for exams and then he says my [REDACTED] is not grounds enough for extra time. Do I have any ground to stand on?
Somebody fell, somebody else fell. One of them was a six year old boy. One of them was a 97 year old woman. Both of them are in the hospital. My great-grandma is fine, thanks for asking. The boy I used to babysit will never be the same again. Funny. But not in a laughing matter sort of way. Funny, in the sense that it is odd. I wish I had Tiresias here with me (the infamous blind seer who foretold Oedipus’ fate, for those of you who are not so caught up on your tragedies). Maybe I too am the criminal I seek. Someone died. Funny how while she was still alive she was some girl I used to smoke with. But today I texted my mom that my friend from high school died. We were in the teal bathroom on the second floor smoking the coil of a dab cart from her neon green dab pen and I set the fire alarm off. She didn’t rat on me. I remember that. We weren’t even friends. I was using her for weed. Why didn’t she rat on me. I checked her Instagram after she died and it said follow back.
© 2025 [No Prompt Necessary]. All rights reserved.
Leave a Reply