Low Impact

Blush_01

I don't know where this came from, nor do I kow where it's going to, it just is at the moment. All feedback relished.



Grit had gathered under my fingernails. I scraped it out with my teeth. In the older days my ears would have burned at the things they were saying above and around me. I would have cowered and hid behind my arms and legs, tangled in a knot of myself. But today I sit; legs curled beneath me, dumb as a cow, large and shy, big eyes staring at nothing in particular. Occasionally I allow myself to make a loud and deep wailing noise, as though I am more an animal than the human I was once taught to think I was.

She doesn’t know where she is, they said. She won’t know the difference, and it will be safer inside, she won’t eat the dirt she picks up on her hands. I do know where I am, I told myself. I do know where I am, and I do not eat the dirt, I merely scrape it off myself in an attempt to become clean, to remove the years of you from my skin so that I can move and function like a normal person again. I do not want to be a cow, to blindly sit until my routine dictates that I move to yet another halting post that means nothing to me but that makes me boil on the inside where it will never find an outlet. I do not want to bawl in a deep, dumb, broken way in order to make myself noticed by those who pass me by or encircle me as though I am a danger to the entire world, despite not being able to hurt the flies that land on my salty brow, where I have been unable to wipe away the sweat. I have no tail with which to swish annoying insects away. They bite my skin, bruise me, suck my blood, and I am helpless. And yet these people christen me a menace, make me appear the burden to be watched, with hawk-eyes sharp as the talons that bite my arms, as I am led to yet another location devoid of humanity - pale and sterile; gritty, dusty and barren.

I am sitting outside. I feel oppressive heat on my head, oppressive words on my ear lobes, climbing into my ears. I bay again, more like a hippopotamus in pain than a woman with the potential to have a career, a life, a child – no, many children, a lover who loves me, and who I love in return. I turn again to the grit beneath my fingernails. They watch me scrape the edge of my incisors beneath the complex formation of my fingernails, pressing into soft pink-grey flesh and dragging brown-black dirt out. The dark dirt feels like part of my soul as I lick my teeth and swallow whatever it has been, whatever the dirt is composed of. If I thought about it I would balk at the idea of allowing something so vile past my lips. But I cannot think, my mind is bruised and heavy. My head lolls to one side, resting on my shoulder, hanging on a chicken’s neck that is weak as string. My swollen belly and anorexic arms are at odds with each other as my eyes almost pop out of their sockets.

I rise slowly into the strong and cruel arms of orderlies who drag me onto my almost-unwilling feet and force me to place one heavy limb in front of the other. I strengthen my floppy neck, stiffen my soft knees and force myself to move forward as though I was propelled by free will and not fear. My progress is slow and I stumble many times. I somehow give myself the air of a graceful but injured swan; neck curled, arms extended slightly for balance as I waver through my painfully slow ballet to the next hitching post where I will sit and curl, rest and dream while sullenly denying myself the means of expression. Self-preservation dictates I be as dumb as I look and feel. As a child I read George Orwell’s novel, 1984, loving how free it made me feel. However, I also felt an overwhelming sense of entrapment, so much so that I was too terrified to ever read it again. Now I find myself trapped in my own 1984, absorbed into the walls of my life, hiding me behind plasterboard inside the walls and letting an empty shell wander the halls and corridors. Pale shapes revolved through my life without making any impact as I tried to breathe through the pressure on my chest. I feel as though the only valuable parts of me have been locked up in a safe that nobody has the key for… and they must stay hidden. Shame on me for thinking I was an exception.

randomhuman

That's pretty good. Something weird about it though... too many I's?