Elizabeth

Smash. Glass tumbles. Spinning through the air, end on end, the shards arc away, glittering and flitting and flying through the early spring light coming through the main windows. The tinkle and patter as it lands is a contrast to the brutal sound of the pane smashing and breaking, en route to violation.

Deep breath. Push down. Pull the arms back. The wave of nausea rising up like a tree growing through me in fast forward, a hundred years of growth in a few seconds. The french doors rattle backwards against the frame as I lean back and instinctively try and extricate myself. I fight the natural urge and try and force myself to relax. I can feel the blood in my temple. Glass tumbles through the air. The house is quiet, one of those rare occasions I'm left to my own devices. Probably for the best if I'm honest. If my mother only knew. Well. Now that I even think about it, she probably does, they always do. But they choose not to. Selective deafness and mis-thinking is a common factor in our family. None of the things I've said or done can possibly be true, so they choose to ignore it.

Force myself to relax and push down again. I should have used the floor bolts to stop the doors moving about. Well, maybe next time. The ridiculousness of the thought made me laugh, even now. Around my feet, the blood pooled, seeping into the carpet, warm and slippery. It sluiced down the partial pane and onto the frame, dripped and flowed unevenly from there, some of it finding its way back onto the frames below, coating them as well. It's surprisingly sunny today, a rare piece of azure in the sky instead of the usual slate grey. Doesn't help my finality any though. [here I could exert myself, my final power, a final act.]

My head lolled forward as I saw the first of the black patches cross my vision. Had to stay upright, till I went properly. I knew that when I fell while my hands were still grasping for the world on the other side of the glass that the wood and glass would shatter more, ripping and tearing at what was left of my arms. I feel my stomach pulling in on itself at the very thought. Tendons would shred, muscle would divorce from bone, ligaments shorn. The more thoroughly I blacked out the less likely that the final coup de grace as I went forward through the rest of the glass would wake me up. The benefits of forward planning; and bitter experience.


It's
not
likeillrem

with a jerk I came back from the semi conscious tilt. My breath inhaled sharply and chillingly through lips as the glass in my forearm bit in unexpectedly.

“Elizabeth? What are you...”

An inrush of wind and dust and leaves as my mother rushes in, dropping the shopping bags. I her the eggs crack as they land. She'll be mad at me for that later, ifI

My eyes open again I feel hands, arms under mine, supporting the weight, trying to lift me off the glass that's jutting into my arm like an iceberg, the rest of the doorframe under the water, it certainly looks that way nowflooringfloodingandflyinginblackandwhiteand

“Oh my god, please, please hurry. My baby girl, my Elizabeth, my...”

My eyes open again. The ceiling rose is dirty. I wince at the fabric biting into my arms below the elbow. My eyes close.


My eyes open again. And again and again. And now it's the height of summer, the day before my 18th, and I lay here in the pristine hospital bed, the nurses fussing brusquely around me. They know why I was here. The severed tendons and brutalised muscles in my arms are, truly, honestly the least of that girls problems, I don't know why she did it, poor thing, I mean look at her, I wish I looked like her, how can a girl who looks like that, cheer up darling, if I looked like you I wouldn't have a care in the world, smile from that pretty face there we go but you should let it reach your eyes once in a while fuckofffuckofffuckfoffyoudontyou'venevereventried to as if that was the only thing that mattered, that they could never understand, my inability, my failure, my fucking bitter, bile spitting failure, to bring something, anything, that burned with the fire of the new, that would scorch the sky and tame the earth because it was fresh in a way that made people's heads spin and minds reel. I sighed again and slept.

My eyes open again. And again and again and again. And now it's more white sheets and institutional green walls, and the physiotherapist holding me under the arm, just less than the barest amount to keep me standing upright and mobile, coaxing and willing and hoping that my wasted muscles, between the malnutrition and time in the bed being turned and turned and turned by well meaning but lost, hopeless, awful people, my legs are unhappy at best and wilfully disobediant and thin and beautiful at worst. And falling less than an arm's length from the bar, and feeling it as I fall as though in slow motion that I know my frail, still tender arms aren't going to catch me, and they're out and they're in front but they're never going to hold
and

My eyes open again, and even from my bed, I can see the blink, blink, blink and flicker of the lights in the city from our house, this creaking pile atop the hill north of the city. We're safe here now. Safer now there's less glass. And don't think I don't see that the kitchen drawer locks, mother. As if I'd resort to that depth of cliché. You don't understand it, you never have. And even that's a cliché, and you don't even get that I know it, that's one of the bits that hurts and bites and catches in my throat overthedinnertableandpolitesopolitedontmentionthatletsskirtarounditconversation the most. It must be late in the night, or very early in the morning. I don't quite get when it switches from being one to the other, they flow uncomfortably into each other in a way that makes me uneasy. Jostling and juggling between one and the other, we're always in transition always moving from one state to each other and people say that it's not the journey but the destination or maybe it's the other way around, but I think it has to be both, you can't have a good journey if you're on your way to die, and we are all, all, every one of us on our way to die, we just have to try and line up everything in between. Delineate, deter from ambiguity, much preferred. Outside though, there's a bird who's singing, something cheerful about the need to feed his family. Ambiguity is probably better considered when you don't need to worry quite so fucking much about where your next meal is coming from. The glow over the back of the horizon tells me that the sun will be coming up soon, and I will face another day.

Consequence, follows action, regardless of intention, and by any intentions and rhyme or reason I should not have been here. I should not have been able to lift, and drink from, and caress the cold stem of, my breath condensing against the side of, that glass that ended up in the river, spilled any unhappy, and empty, no longer half full or half empty just a thing, an empty vessel.
`
Ever since I was born, or at least since I stopped being a solpisist, I started to corrode. I might start retreating back into that, maybe I already have. How would I even know? But I suspect, strongly suspect, and it burns, and hurts a little every time I think it, that no-one else feels like this. No-one, in the history of the world, in hundreds and thousands of millions of people, has ever felt this way. How vain.

Every day I decay a little, and with each passing minute and second and hour, another slice, slice, slice of my life, my existence, my whole is lopped off. We call this living, and we do it because we must. There is more than intent, more than just being, and more than just living. That's what the others could never understand, that's why we fought bitterly, tears and hoarse throats, drained and empty, hollowing inside out. The road to hell is, as they say, paved with good intentions, and that's why well meaning actions that result in nothing – well it's nothing short of death. Bad intent, the worst intent that you have in your darkest, bitterest moments, that results in beauty is far beyond death, because the dissonance is too great for us to handle, to comprehend. Now I realise, as the seconds and minutes and hours are shaved away that they lack a something the others call life, experience, living.

Through the window, I should have shut the curtains before retreating to bed last night, every night, I do it and every morning I wake before dawn, even in the grey wasteland we call weather, before dawn and wonder why I didn't do it. But through the window, and through the haze, the sun is audaciously starting to creep over the horizon off to the side of the city. Soon light will stream into windows, and people all over the place will blink, and yawn, and throw off their comforters and comforts and push themselves out into the world for another harsh day. Protecting themselves by insulating themselves from feeling, coating the wire. Inert glassware to carry the vicious acids that form our day to day lives. Or theirs. I'm not sure it's mine anymore, I think I threw all that away when I

glass tumbled

My eyes open again. It's the last big weekend before the weather turns and our clothes turn longer and warmer and hide our bare flesh away from prying, inquisitive eyes. The end of the century, it feels like. Eight weeks out of that bed, and my legs are still unsteady, far unsteadier than my mind is now, for once. They betray me and wobble and wave, and they're not helped by this deck that holds prying, inquisitive eyes. Eyes who stand on the other side of the bar on the boat on the river in the city that barely seems to sleep and never really seems to wake up and don't even look abashed as they stare at my arms, for once not hidden by sleeves or some other tailor's trick of gauze, and linen and art, and doesn't she look so elegant? Clumsily covered with makeup, concealer misnamed, my exposed upper limbs are a call to abuse, none of it original, none of it new, and none of it knew, not really, what you go through to get there, unless I'd been in some terrible vehicular accident, and even at that it was rude to make assumptions and ruder to point and look and everything else, and even ruder to, oh fuck it. I threw the drink, glass and all over the rail, it splashing gently, can't even tell if it smashed, probably from this height above the water. Looking, I couldn't see the glass, but I could see, just about dispersed the bloodstain it had left in the water, before the holy baptismal of the river washed it away, diluted and eventually draining away into the ocean. A snigger from the eyes on the other side of the bar. I put my weight on the ball of my foot and feel my thighs tremor as they decide whether or not they're willing to take this kind of abuse and they decide that they do for this time maybe just this time, and let the world rotate around me, and walk off the boat, stupid boat on the river. I sigh. I'll sleep later.

If it has to be, then our – my – entire purpose has to be, as we corrode and crumble into nothingness every day, that we make something new. All of my intentions must be devoted to that end or we are all for nought, regardless of what the others, the faceless, and the leader may do to us. Even under the heaviest burden of oppression and influence we can still create that something new, something special, the original from which all others are derived. That, and only that can give the hours and seconds and minutes value, and meaning, and purpose.

I sigh. For now, I sleep.