I’ve been away for the past 48 hours. At my shack.
Rejuv’ing. Purple potion. 100%
Eating, resting, exploring.
No phone, no electricity.
Just her and I.
Fire and blankets.
I taught her how to shuffle.
We played cards.
We talked.
Humans are the only animal to believe in god but the only creature to act like they don’t.
Do animals believe in god?
Do animals have souls.
Classic.

What is east?
What is west?
We live on the surface of a sphere.
Cultures vary dramatically.

“Who has rice for breakfast”
“Good and Evil aren’t real”
“What are you thinking”
-Carry me on your back- like always.

I’m on cloud nine. What a day, what a time. what fun. Such fun. Fun fun fun.

***

She sat in an alley alone. Head bowed picking at a flayed bit of skin.
It stung. The paper thin cut she’d giver herself at such a sever angle stung. She didn’t remember putting lemon juice in the wound. Why did it sting so much.

She hadn’t been home in a few days. She rarely washed her hands with soap. Soap was for saved for those special times. Like when she’d return home, thin faced; haggard from hiking with days worth of grime and grit under her nails and eye lids.

That gravelly, sleep preventing feeling plagued her more and more recently. Closing her eyes rubbed somehow. An uncomfortable warmth would settle, like wet sandbags dragging at the bottom lid, while the top felt inside out. She pulled out her pocket mirror and spat on it.

Rubbing the smokey reflecting glass on her rag-shirt. She felt it flit over her nipple. The intricate landscape of it, hard and cold. The abruptness of teat. She shivered, feeling ill with her own breasts. Bags of wasteful flesh. Water. Fat. Slappy Bags. Fucking anchors. Sick, she just felt sick.

Looking at herself. One eye closed, mouth cracked into a one sided smile. To the brim, resentment washed out of her with each exhale from those cracked lips. She pinched the skin behind her right ear, hard. And listened for her pain. A habit she’d developed recently.

She’d first started cutting when she was very young. Just 11. “Cutting” people called it. Like it was common. Truth be told it was. But people in their innumerable, immeasurable boredoms found infinite justifications. Reasoning. Raising pulses. Feeling alive. Pleasure of pain. Humanity. Control. Deep bullshit. Then it was. And not heaps had changed.
“attention seeking behaviour”. – she shuddered.

Individual cut down to its stump. Glory, a glowering, shiver of a woman. She pulled a pencil from her pocket. Then out came the basic sharpener. She’d removed the tiny blade from the large shaver, and left the small. What a buy. Her two favourite pass times. Bliss. She gritted her teeth. Grinding too her temples. She bit back the renewed string in her wrist. Spittle shot from her lips.

She was a medusa. Lank hair, arched back, legs curled under and back behind her. Sharpening her pencil to begin writing, wrists ablaze. One eye open. Head down. She thought about singing a song she’d heard recently and started to chuckle silently. Her shoulders rising. Like a crow with two broken wings trying to take off. A tear rolled down her face, and she wiped at it with her slashed wrist. No blood. Just a thin, paper thin piece of skin. The width of her smallest finger nail. Cut in, and under and slide, control, unique, close attention. Fire and pain. All the way around like a bracelet. She could wear it anytime. And only cost as much as a pencil sharpener.

Sniffing. She looked to her satchel. Poetry today maybe. She’d hit a good vein recently. She didn’t know the difference between good poetry and bad. She thumbed her wrist. Then pinched behind her ear. She wanted to go an waste time elsewhere now. Thoughts came to her in droves sometimes. And she’d no idea who was driving them. They didn’t stick to the rules. The roads in her mind were clogged with wreckage. Smouldering. Bodies and bad fumes spilling from head-on collisions.

Why a baseball bat. Why do I have to have one of those. And why would I hit roses. Flowers should remain un-picked. I said that to myself just yeterday.
“What fun would that be”
Now. Now matters. Hit them in joy. Swing and beat them into the sky. Let the breeze share their beauty with the world. Growing only to die. Never to be free. Scatter them before they are ashes. Colours my petal.

She heard pain. It was her own. She held her breath. Her back cracked. Heart beat once. Belly, chest swelled. Beat growing. Heat, the sound of static. No pain. Not too far. She breathed out slowly. Then back in. Sweet. Roses and apricots. She’d eaten one earlier. What a strange thought process. The front part of her brain hurt in her head.

Wood pecker trying to drill into her frontal lobe. She needed to get laid. Her legs were pulp. Pins and needles were five minute ago. Up an down. Up and down. Roll off coat. GET TOAST FOR HER. Jam, jam, jam. Sweet. But don’t listen, pinch yourself behind the ear, hard. Listen to my pain. Feel that it is what it is.

She licked her lips. She had to get. Resolute, lips pursed, then a straight line. Arms out for balance. Bag strap wrapped around her wrist. Swinging erratic. Stinging ebbing. “done! How can I still be feeling”

Her senses were muting slowly. The white haze was setting in. She’d rubbed grey-lead from her pencils, from days worth of writing, shavings into her hair. Bits and clouds of grey would fall like dandruff and puffs of clouds. She was the forgotten vacuum cleaner bag. Dust came in clouds. Tiny bits that could choke and kill. Glass, dirt, grit. Serrated nails. Straight teeth. White too. Dry lips. Dry everything. Parched, she wobbled her way down the alley. Towards this light.

Senses tingling.
I’ve done it out of love for myself. Nobody else lets themselves experience what I do. I do it. I do it to me. I feel my bones. I am raw. Her heart was a waterfall. Legs were beams. Thighs, bamboo. Spine knuckled. Hands wretched. Face grim but for the smile. Wretched, hellbent. Resolute as the dust was to drift and fall.

She stepped into the light and hailed a black cab. Standing at the door until the driver got out and tucked her into her seat. Putting a belt about her.
He listened intently to her, pinching his ear to her whisper.
-Took money before the cab set off.
Away’t’went’tide of others. Nothing left to feel.
Black