[30 in 09/10] Time To Do This (1/1)
maerhys said 2nd person OF, and this happened. sometimes i walk too fine a line between fiction and nonfiction. advice is welcome.
Time To Do This
fiction; magic realism [read: WHALES]
pg
560 words
one of endless possible takes on sink or swim.
You don’t know what the back of a whale feels like, but you figure it out. Smooth thick skin stretched over uneven terrain, crags, bumps, snags, and old scrapes; terrifying at how slippery, at the lack of hand-holds, but somehow two flat pressed palms keep you there even through the hard disorienting rush of breaking the surface, the ear-splitting pressure of the blowhole spitting mist and dead air; through your own oxygen-starved gasp.
The sun feels like a new bath. Heat reflects prisms, a hundred of them, one for each drop of salt water left to dry on your pale back. Given an hour, white residue would crust to your shoulders. Given seconds, your body is wiped clean again on yet another baptism, and down you go.
It’s a mystery, what you’re doing down here. You’ve got places to be. When your sister says, shape up or ship out, you want to tell her, shut up. Mama didn’t raise no fool. Mama didn’t raise no nobody. Mama raised hell; mama raised a hand; mama raised a glass. You want to tell her, I know what I’m doing, and I’ll do whatever I want.
And maybe you want to ride till you drown. You want to feel the head-first angle that has you slipping forward, clenching your thighs to keep you in place, thrilling at the prospect of being lost to this mid-depth, unable to find your way back up, suspended there in murky almost-light.
You want to feel the way your body is heaved by each powerful thrust downward. Maybe you’re not afraid of the dark, maybe you’re not afraid of being breathless. How would she know? How would anyone know? How will you, until you do it?
Try to limit me, you think. And see.
The alternative, of course: meaningless up-keep: it’s better than answering phone calls. It’s better than keeping a gas tank full. It’s better than practicing advanced responding in every day conversation when no one else knows what it is or how to do it. The no-ones who effortlessly bring feelings of inadequacy and uselessness to anyone who speaks to them. The no-ones who believe listening is a form of thinking of what to say next. Why do you even answer the phone anymore.
Here it’s dark, and the silence fills up your ear drums in the form of pounds-per-square-inch, pressing at your mind, forcing thoughts through a sieve and only cupping what’s pertinent. I’m still alive, somehow.
And it makes you conscious of your own body; legs bruised and banged up like a little boy’s; pale, sprouts of hair that are not okay. A calf muscle is sore from charlie horses in the middle of the night, trying to resist your dreams. Your dreams consist of faces of the ones you love, telling to you to do something else. To do anything but this. To do that instead.
You remember doing that. You did that until you drank until your body chose sleep over sulfites. You woke up, each morning, disappointed that the sulfites had lost. You’re all set with that.
Time to fucking starve. Time to make your chest hurt, to be tired, time for your muscles to burn with use. You want to swim, right, to be taken down into these heavy depths, to clench fingers at old, gray, bumpy, learned skin and let it guide you, so what will you do? What will you do?
Time To Do This
fiction; magic realism [read: WHALES]
pg
560 words
one of endless possible takes on sink or swim.
You don’t know what the back of a whale feels like, but you figure it out. Smooth thick skin stretched over uneven terrain, crags, bumps, snags, and old scrapes; terrifying at how slippery, at the lack of hand-holds, but somehow two flat pressed palms keep you there even through the hard disorienting rush of breaking the surface, the ear-splitting pressure of the blowhole spitting mist and dead air; through your own oxygen-starved gasp.
The sun feels like a new bath. Heat reflects prisms, a hundred of them, one for each drop of salt water left to dry on your pale back. Given an hour, white residue would crust to your shoulders. Given seconds, your body is wiped clean again on yet another baptism, and down you go.
It’s a mystery, what you’re doing down here. You’ve got places to be. When your sister says, shape up or ship out, you want to tell her, shut up. Mama didn’t raise no fool. Mama didn’t raise no nobody. Mama raised hell; mama raised a hand; mama raised a glass. You want to tell her, I know what I’m doing, and I’ll do whatever I want.
And maybe you want to ride till you drown. You want to feel the head-first angle that has you slipping forward, clenching your thighs to keep you in place, thrilling at the prospect of being lost to this mid-depth, unable to find your way back up, suspended there in murky almost-light.
You want to feel the way your body is heaved by each powerful thrust downward. Maybe you’re not afraid of the dark, maybe you’re not afraid of being breathless. How would she know? How would anyone know? How will you, until you do it?
Try to limit me, you think. And see.
The alternative, of course: meaningless up-keep: it’s better than answering phone calls. It’s better than keeping a gas tank full. It’s better than practicing advanced responding in every day conversation when no one else knows what it is or how to do it. The no-ones who effortlessly bring feelings of inadequacy and uselessness to anyone who speaks to them. The no-ones who believe listening is a form of thinking of what to say next. Why do you even answer the phone anymore.
Here it’s dark, and the silence fills up your ear drums in the form of pounds-per-square-inch, pressing at your mind, forcing thoughts through a sieve and only cupping what’s pertinent. I’m still alive, somehow.
And it makes you conscious of your own body; legs bruised and banged up like a little boy’s; pale, sprouts of hair that are not okay. A calf muscle is sore from charlie horses in the middle of the night, trying to resist your dreams. Your dreams consist of faces of the ones you love, telling to you to do something else. To do anything but this. To do that instead.
You remember doing that. You did that until you drank until your body chose sleep over sulfites. You woke up, each morning, disappointed that the sulfites had lost. You’re all set with that.
Time to fucking starve. Time to make your chest hurt, to be tired, time for your muscles to burn with use. You want to swim, right, to be taken down into these heavy depths, to clench fingers at old, gray, bumpy, learned skin and let it guide you, so what will you do? What will you do?