stare into the flame. teal candle, wax puddles around the wick but it's dripless, so it just burns.
david doesn't understand. we've been trying out my latest bong. sitting on the wooden floor, bong on the weird pseudopersian carpet i bought at the middle eastern deli downstairs. cat toys, shoes, housekeys are scattered about. we're giddy, happy. eve is crawling all over david's back, shoulders, lap, purring loudly. the only light in the room comes from the candle and two small desk lamps.
thick thick house key, leftover from an old apartment. i keep it cause it's so big and weird-looking. solid, something you can heft. held over candle, brass turns black.
weird visceral thrill, bringing it close to my skin, feeling heat radiate from it, wondering if i will, if i can, anticipating excruciation. then plunge, flat of key against inner wrist, right by the latest scar.
whitehotscintillating and i fight the impulse to jerk the key away. eyes closed, thought/vision/pain blend, creamy mixing smooth as paint into an instant of sheer being, iridescent, pain melding into fear melding into unbearable bright white behind my eyes.
it dissipates, slowly, each step downward bringing me farther from that moment of transcendence and closer to the very real pain behind it. hot metal translating to burnt flesh and the heat melts away into my arm until nothing is left, no sensation, only a now-moment i have no words for.
beauty of a sort, pushing through unbearable pain, passing to silent quiescence. i had to try again, wanted to try again. four times in one spot, twice in another, twice with the edge of a blade, innumerable times with match heads.
okay, so now my arm is dotted with two major and several minor 2nd-degree burns, one large 3rd-degree burn where the flesh is charred white with black edges. i put cream on them at night, and think about that one moment when pain transcended and became something *real*, realer than most things in my life have been, and in a strange way didn't "hurt."
catharsis bleeding never brought. closure. i chose this, and i saw it through to the end and the end was sweet relief. meeting the unimaginable, making it real, enduring, and surviving.
my life in microcosm.
--
sine | deb
who, though ostracized, needed to try
to explain this in words