Almost Midnight

Kattar Moon *Encantado*

(online)

                                                                I found another something. This poem by Paul     

                                                                Laurence Dunbar.

                                                                                                                      11:46 PM

Which one?

                    11:47 PM

                                                                                It reminded me of you.

                                                                                                                       11:47 PM

                                                                               “Not Those Who Soar”

                                                                                                                       11:48 PM

Hah.

                   11:48 PM

I like that one.

                   11:49 PM

Bubbles 

I pour in almost twice the suggested amount of bubble bath, filling my little bathroom with the overbearing scent of green tea leaves and cinnamon. I consider opening the window, then think better of it. It’s nearly 15 below.

I pull up my stress-free playlist, and turn the sound way down, letting the vibrations make the plastic buzz as I leave my cell laying facedown on the toilet lid.

Shedding my 8-day dirty jeans and sweaty socks, I toss them onto the wicker hamper lid, preparing my willpower for the first real bath I’ve been able to take since the wounds on my legs sealed off, relieved to finally have the green light… I’m long past ready for this-

-Don’t think I would have had the energy to try to stand in the shower today, going through the tedious steps of cleansing my ravaged carapace. I know I wouldn’t have had the patience to be gentle, and that would’ve set the whole process backward again. The last thing I want is an infection - to be hospitalized all over again. Or…maybe the second to last thing…

I take a deep breath and ease my body into the warm water, forgetting the nurse’s instructions to test the water temperature first, to avoid any sort of shock. Fortunately, it’s cool enough, but even the slightest stimuli trigger the panic. I’m not sure if it hurts or if I just think it does. My skin begins screaming at me, as I grit my teeth, and submerge my body up to the neck. It’s a little better after the initial alarm. Like the first chill of diving into a frigid river. I leave the water running, churning soap into a layer of foam like the froth on a vanilla latte. I steep. Steaming my cinnamon skin into “Lady Tea.” Thick bubbles shimmer on the surface with little rainbows, a thousand shades of glory, as if someone captured Iris in a bottle. The simplicity is dazzling.

I think of taking a picture of that and sending it to Kattar, but I doubt he’d count it.

Slowly I breathe out, resisting the soreness in my abdomen, the tension echoes in my muscles - a whisper-groan in the back of my throat. I brace my hands against the sides of the bathtub. Slippery. Cautiously, I reposition myself aching frame until I’m sitting a little more upright, agitating the fluffy soup into little waves as I take up the purple loofa with my left hand. 

I can’t ignore the scars. 

I tried to. All of the lady nurses were nice enough to tell me I had such a pretty face, but I knew they could see all the ugly I couldn’t even imagine - on my shoulders, my back, and neck.

I look like fate used my body as a scratch pad to play tic tac toe. Xs and Os are littered across the mottled canvas. Semi-mended puncture wounds from needles and IVs and about a million stitches stain me with the memories.

I trace the trauma tattoos, fingering each scar like I’m touching a stranger's body. I hate that thought, and I hate the feeling. An uncomfortable sense of alienation wriggles up my spine and worms its way into my chest. I want to get away from it - this - me. 

I try to remember the proper name for this living dead vessel that insists on existing - carrying me forward into another day when I wish I could just curl up in a ball and wish reality away. 

I can feel the faint pulse under my skin - the slight warmth - blooming roses in my cheeks - from the toasted air and the scented steam. But there’s no reason I should still be alive. 

As ‘okay’ as I apparently am.

I can still walk, and that’s more than Kattar can say for himself, at the moment.

A thickness rises in my throat and I want to throw up or scream. Instead, I stare blankly at the icebergs of bubbled snow floating in my ocean of a bathroom. I force my eyes to focus on the scars again. The crooked, ugly red.

“I’m never going to be beautiful again,” I say over and over. Trying to make myself cry, so I can get over it. But for once in my life I can’t.

Ombre Walls

“...Actually, if you don’t mind, could you do something for me?”

I say sure.

“It’s gonna be a minute until I can leave again. The doctors want to keep me monitored, just in case the organ damage is worse than they thought…” I can feel his nervous concern, the surrogate depression he’s swallowing in each breath I breathe out. He hurries to add, “It’s not that bad, but I’m going almost stir crazy staying in this hospital room all the time.”

I swallow silently. Just waiting for the part where there’s something I can do about that.

“When you get home…” he hesitates, “Well, I was thinking of a sort of challenge you could do, for both of us. If you’re willing…just to take a picture every day, of something you find beautiful, and send it to me. Just so I can enjoy a change of scenery. It can be anything you like, so long as it’s pretty.”

“Alright, promise.” 

I have no idea what it’s going to be.

Staring at the ombre walls I conjure images of superficial perfection and elegance, all echoes of emotions trapped in masterpieces that mean nothing to me and the darkness is so thick I can’t breathe.

It’s 1 a.m. in the emptiness, the morning after my discharge from the hospital, and I just realized that nothing is beautiful anymore. 

The idea of depth

“ ‘Sunset in Pastel’ is a whimsical play on the early impressionist style, invoking memories of crayon-sketching childhood with its striking use of vivid, unblended pastels. An artistic punch in the face, as it were…” 

According to the sages of the internet, PTSD is inherently temporary - fleeting even. 

It’s the shakes when an overlooked pebble throws you from your bicycle. 

The frantic heartbeat after the battle is over, when you can’t function, but just for the moment, as your body waits for your mind to realize that the danger is over…

“Vegerra makes intelligent use of contrast, countering the summery shades of pink and gold with the bold blue-black darkness eating away at the edges of the sunset. Subtle shadows hint anxiously at an unforeseen future- the evils brooding with their hands on the door as Nightfall makes her grand entrance…”

Then there’s CPTSD. Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. 

The trembling every time your lover touches you. The mental breakdown at the sight of a firearm. The panic attack, when you even think about opening the car door. What’s keeping me awake at night.

I stare at the bedroom ceiling Kattar and I painted last Autumn. My novice recreation of Vegerra’s “Sunset in Pastel.” I remember scrubbing the walls with soap and water until they were blindingly white, just to turn around and freckle them with great daubs of yellow and pink. Poking my fingerprint into the paint splotches, or my whole hand. Massaging the surface, “to give the idea of depth. To mimic motion.” I remember laying directly on the floor - my hair sprawled out around my head like a chestnut hurricane - watching the paint dry. Waiting for something to go wrong. Searching for the mistakes.

Nothing could ever be perfect.

My brain runs a thousand miles a minute - no matter how hard I try to turn it off - calculating the next steps in the armageddon poised to destroy what’s left of my life. I feel like a psychopath, bleeding with some sort of appetite for horror - fantasizing about our ending. 

Scheming a recovery. 

But I can’t turn the thoughts off - though I’d never tell Kattar - how many different ways I’ve imagined, the nurses telling me the surgeries failed. That he’s never going to walk again. That they lost him. Condolences.

I try to reorganize the feelings. Put them in neat little boxes, with labels. Anxiety. Shock. Dismay. They’re normal - they all seem to spill into each other, mixing to form some demonic shade of despondence and melancholy, painting a thin film over life. 

I wear blood-tinted glasses, realizing, I’m bracing myself for his death. 

I’m already mourning us both.

“If you look closely you can see where the yellow spirals into pink, all the colors intermingling and scattered amongst each other. Vegerra patiently shifts the ratio, and the sunset bleeds redder. It’s subtle.”

It’s the part where something broke. Or you broke. And the signals aren’t getting through. Like maybe nothing will ever be okay again.