Purple Finch Press

Fiori Mitchell —

The milky light touched the sky, mixing into its dark blue color like cream into coffee. Too early to be morning, too late to be night. The roosters and me, the only ones awake. The soft lightening of the scenery outside the window was only a reminder that it was going to start all over again. Silver outlines glowed at the edges of every shape, every crumpled shirt abandoned on the floor, making up a cemetery of my dignity beneath my feet as I stepped softly into bed. Outlined by the melancholy light of 4:30, the treetops reached toward the sky, for something more, into pale oblivion. 

. . .

Tangled in the sheets, I blinked into existence once more. What a meaningless beginning. The shower’s steam broke the cold, icy numbness that had spread over my body in my sleep, but the warmth was only superficial. The soap flowing from my hair couldn’t wash away the grime that lined my intestines. If only I could take them out and wring them in soapy water until the water ran black and they were light and untwisted again. If only I could be rid of them.

Dark curls hung, outlined against my face, dripping with water. Eyes looked into my misty reflection, sunken from a fatigue that sleep could never keep up with. My face became distorted by the streaky water droplets as I wiped away the fog. I stared into my wavy features, barely recognizable. I pulled on the cleanest of my clothes, peeled off the floor like skin off the bone. They hung off my body as if they longed to melt back into a puddle on the floor, the loose fabric obscuring the body beneath. How must it feel to live in one’s own body? 

. . .

I walked down the rail trail, each step feeling more wrong than the last, each one forward taking me backward instead. Faces blurred into nothing, just streaky forms in the light rain. The fluid of my brain burned with the desire for someone to know just how much my mind was on fire. Yet the occasional passerby remained unaware. The trail stretched, and darkness unfolded upon me. It gripped at my mind, dragging my stomach down into an endless pit. I veered off the path.

Twigs and thorns crunched like mouse bones underfoot. The air felt dark even as the sky was light. Gentle raindrops disturbed the leaves, their bouncing forms pulling me deeper. A lonely water droplet ran down the bridge of my nose, as if to evade the rushing river behind my stormy eyes, hanging just a moment at the tip before plummeting down, unnoticed, to lie with the leaf debris and rot. My body stumbled on, the darkness dragging me further and further into isolation. I could disappear into nothing and never have even left a trace. The silence was deafening. This aching limbo that consumed my being. Knees crumbling, body burning, mind splintering. I could only scream. 

. . .

The door hesitantly invited me back inside. My water-soaked clothes dripped onto the floorboards, forming a pool around my feet. If it were any deeper, I feared I would drown in it. I stripped the sopping clothes from my body, leaving the heap bleeding on the kitchen tile. On the couch, the blankets wrapped around me like a silk cocoon, the soft fibers brushing my sticky skin. The TV glowed in front of me, tilted 90 degrees to the left. There I lay as I liquified in my tomb, mind not thinking, eyes not seeing.

A cool breeze brushed across my face from the open window. It called to me. I made my way over and stood by the opening. I looked out into the deep blue, waiting for a car or a lone stranger to pass by down below, but they never did. No headlights to break my growing thoughts and no screen in the window to block my imagination. I slid my feet out into the night, gazing at their pallid form dangling into the darkness. They almost could be submerged in the sea, the way the blue got darker the deeper they were. If I were to plunge deeper… would the water catch me? Or… 

As I hung at the precipice, the dizzying height began to lull me towards a sleep that would finally quell my fatigue. The familiar pale light blurred across the horizon, the stars blinking out one by one. Everything was so quiet. Not even the rooster awake. The suffocating hour of 4:29. I dipped my toes further, inching closer to the edge. I could feel the tingle in my palms as I slid even nearer, teetering between the water and the air. I looked down as one burning tear rolled down my cheek to the street below. More soon bubbled up, filling my vision with a haze of soft light, cerulean and peach. My face flushed and swollen, as I sobbed, gripping the window frame, my tremors threatening to send me tumbling down. When my breath was short and gasping, I stepped back down from the windowsill. Back into the familiar numbness of living.