Tag: prose

on self-harm: “other bodies”

owen gent 5

TW: Self-harm

The feeling that precedes it is a quiet panic: the sense that she is not feeling enough, or feeling too much the wrong way.

Safety pins and tacks do the job sometimes. The marks they leave are an irritated red. They heal like cat scratches, but too straight to fit the lie. It takes a lot of pressure to draw blood.

Sometimes, she can stave off the urge with the drag of her thumbnail down her forearm, or the center of her throat. This leaves a mark, too, but it’s faint enough that people don’t ask.

Sometimes other people’s bodies will do the job. His fingers are clumsy, floundering. She wakes up in a panic the next morning when she remembers what she’s done but not what his name is. She regains the knowledge via text from a friend: Hudson, like the Bay.

His fingers are slick when he enters her. He puts them in his mouth and sucks on them first, maintaining eye contact the entire time. His fingers jab into her in the general direction of where they both assume her g-spot is. They are rigid and insistent, maintaining the ruthless pace of a second-hand jackhammer.

Metal is different. When she uses scissors — knives and razors seem too dangerous — she expects to see the flesh part red and wet, revealing complex patterns inside, like a pomegranate, or the little teardrops inside an orange slice.

(She looks them up later: they are called vesicles. She repeats the word to herself: vesicles.)

Instead, there is just blood. Not a lot of blood. She thinks there are some major veins on the inside of your thighs or something; she keeps this in mind when she drags the scissor blade over the muscle there, flinching. The metal is not the problem: it is her own wavering grip, too afraid to push too deep, of blooming more pain than she’s bargained for. She knows people have cut through muscles down to the bone. She knows people who have ended up in the hospital for it. She knows she is supposed to feel comforted that she’s not part of this dysfunctional elite, but mostly the knowledge makes her feel like she’s not trying hard enough.

She tries to keep them even in length and depth. They never are. The blood pools in straight lines. She wipes it away; it blossoms again, a thin line interrupted by sluggish beads, a delicate filament made of nothing but her.

When she was little, she always ran her baths too hot. She would sit on the edge, naked flesh pricked with goosebumps, running cold water in and stirring it, flinching at the hot current that made her hand flush. She acclimatized to heat in increments, trained herself over time to embrace water that makes her feel raw all over, makes her body breathe plumes of steam when she rises.

these words by Caitlyn Spencer were inspired by the colour of Owen Gent 

 

Countdown to flight

 

tran nguyen 2

  1. Nineteen thirty-seven was Icarus in seamed stockings. My grandmother spent nights praying for the blanched bones of Amelia Earhart, femur and sacrum floating somewhere in a blackened sea. Gravity could kill a gal. Now, Google tells me that my fear of flying is an inherited nervousness, a bred-in-the-bone type of thing.
  1. WebMD prescribes knowledge. I learn about Harriet Quimby and Queen Bessie Coleman, early female pilots. Dead in their thirties, cockpits exploding without warning. I imagine a lone parachute floating out of the wreckage, silken and monarch-like in the sky.
  1. In the garden, Sasha tells me she is happy I get some time off. She makes it sound like a vacation, but I am obligated to fly. When she asks me what’s wrong I can only water the plants. People are so comfortable on planes they’ve made a whole club out of fucking miles-high. I am ashamed of my ridiculousness. But later, I tell her the truth when we are wrist-deep in the earth.
  1. “Fear of flying,” the webpage psychologist writes, “is a couched fear of relinquishing control.” As if letting go of all that bodily warning is easy. I read about aerodynamics, the structure of Boeing 747s, the years of pilots’ training. It isn’t enough. And I caution myself against equating education with trustworthiness.
  1. I read the article about the flight attendant and the pilot. How he’ll only be criminally charged if he returns to the island where he attacked her: palm trees, hotel layover, her heels kicking frantically into his flesh. I picture her dressing in the company’s colours, returning to the cabin, repeating the spiel about emergency exits as the earth gives way.
  1. It is still so far away, and then it is tomorrow. The night before, I dream of the ghost of my grandmother, her body bruised in a sea of crushed metal, a sea of blue birds and  bones. I dream of ghostly women plied open, their organs airborne. I dream of dangerous engines, a lathe of waves, winglessness.
  1. I stand in line at midnight, clutching my passport. The red-eye was cheapest. Sasha has loaned me her gray silk dress, and this alone keeps me calm: the fabric extravagant against my skin and the faint familiar smell of her, soil and strawberry leaves. This dress, her shared self, deserves to fly. If I plummet to death in a fiery crash, I tell myself, at least I will go out in style.
  1. On the plane, I have a window seat. It is dark and plotted evenly, like a little grave.

The man beside me asks, “Business or pleasure?” When I don’t reply, he laughs and   tells me I need to relax. I don’t know how to relax, so I open the in-flight magazine. I   hope this is a good way to end a conversation.

  1. A woman puckers her lips from the pages. She is surrounded by feathers and the engine underneath me starts shaking. “You’re a very interesting, mysterious girl,” the man continues, but his words are liquified by the engine’s shuddering so I can only hear  — you’re a girl. Then we are moving and it is all really happening so fast.
  1. This is the feeling of surrendering your centre of gravity. As I watch the city shrink beneath me I feel my body become weightless and irrelevant, strapped into an altitude I can’t adjust. I am only anchored by the things I’ve buried, all the things other women have carefully buried inside me. In my mouth, vomit blossoms like a flower.

 

these words by Sarah Christina Brown were inspired by the art of Tran Nguyen

On Kink Dynamics: “Holding the reins”

tran nguyen 3

My lower vertebrae clutch and seize in towards centre, bringing my back to sway, chest thrown open. The muscles along my inner thighs grip, and I sense your body surge under me, releasing. That familiar flush of lavender spreads across the temples: I enter the state that lets me unleash my strength on you. This armour is a lie, but it is mine. The taste of metal in my mouth as I plunge into the folds of your body shields me and offers resilience. I do want to reveal myself to you, but slowly.

First, I want you to want me. Tell me over and over how good it is, how nobody has understood your body like I do. I shut my eyes out and feel you. It is not calculated, it is how I have learned to protect myself. I still don’t know how to ask for precisely what I want, while your desire is bare under me.

What I don’t tell you is how much I need this: not just to please you. I am not that generous. Your moans awaken a power in me that I cannot access alone.

The thought of you is not enough: I need to have you breathing against my skin, to feel your heat, to hear you say Please. I am not just doing this for you.

You tell me not to ask permission and I take this in, swallow it, find other ways of asking. I watch the arch of your back, listen for the depth of your breath, testing.

The lift of your pelvis instructs my mouth to move and you tell me not to be careful. You sense my fear and I say, Yes, because we are treading a thin edge. The structure slips, you taste my tears on your face, wrap my limbs around yours. Still trembling I gather strength and move into you. Each tug elicits the sound of more, the scrape of your claws on my thighs, your pulse beneath my teeth.

We catch each other over and over again.

 

These words by Alisha Mascarenhas were inspired by the art by Tran Nguyen,

and are also a response to Xan West’s “I’m not just doing it for you” 

From the author: “I wrote this in response to Xan West’s article on myths about “topping” in kink dynamics. West’s piece suggests some of the ways in which tops/dominants tend to be seen as selflessly offering an experience to bottoms/submissives, obfuscating the top’s own pleasures and desires. The physicality of Tran Nguyen’s piece evoked a sense of mutuality within an image that might presuppose power being held by the person holding the reins. I must be dead clear that I am not likening bottoms to animals being ridden (which would further exacerbate existing dichotomies between masculine/feminine and civilized/savage). I am, rather, drawing from the implicit, dynamic power relationship and vulnerabilities being represented through this visual.”

 

On Running Away: “Jack-o’-lantern”

SW 4

        Big city at last. Buildings, cement, a few trees. Some birds tweeting the fall of dusk. I’d hitched in. Now what? I must have had a lost look on my face because a van pulled up and drove alongside me, matching my pace.

         “Hello there!” called the driver.

         “Hi,” I said.

          He stopped the car and got out. Introduced himself as Norbert.

         “What’s your take on the problems of this country?” he said.

         “I don’t know,” I said.

         “Feel like talking about it?” he said.

         “Sure.”

         “Feel like having a free dinner?” he said.

         “Alright,” I said. He opened the back of the van. There was a young woman in there.

         “That’s Sarah,” Norbert said. I got in. Norbert shut the doors and the van took off. 

        I talked with Sarah. Another runaway picked up off the street. Where the hell were we going? Can’t be any worse than where we came from, we both laughed. She took my hand in hers as we bumped along.

         The van came to a stop. Norbert opened the back. I heard cicadas.

        “Come on, you two,” said. Sarah pulled up her tights and we followed him onto some sprawling estate and into a red brick country home. The cooking aromas were scintillating. I had not eaten all day.

        “Help yourselves,” he said. “After that we’ll have a little presentation.”

        The food was laid out buffet style in the dining area. Stacks of clean plates, plastic cups, a pitcher of water with lemon slices in it. There were six or seven dishes to choose from. Some other young people joined us. They were all quiet and respectful. The food was vegetarian, cooked to perfection, completely satisfying.

      “We’ll begin the presentation whenever you’re ready,” said Norbert. There were about ten cheap plastic chairs unfolded in the salon, but only Sarah and I sat. It was a slideshow. Norbert used a pointer as he clicked from slide to slide. The world was in crisis, he said. It was up to us to fix it.

        I raised my hand. “Is this a cult?” I said. Not that I really minded if it was.

        Norbert laughed. “We are called a cult by the mainstream. But we think the mainstream is a cult.”

       In my mind’s eye I saw a generic house, some generic suburbs. The home I’d bolted from. The home my father came to at dusk, exhausted, complaining. Ugly mood. Hating his job, his colleagues, his family. Yet, judging the fools who did not live their lives as he did.

       Good Riddance, he’d have said Mom. The only way we let her back is if she cries and begs and apologizes. Otherwise she does not set foot in this house again. Is that clear? 

         Mom would nod, her head down, hands folded, like a statue.

       He’d sleep. She would not. The light would be on all night. The house like a Jack-o’-lantern. My mother at the kitchen table, begging me to call, to let her talk to me one last time, so she could beg me to grovel before the old man like she did.

these words by Alden Chorush were inspired by the colour of Sarah Williams

these words by Alden Chorush were inspired by the colour of Sarah Williams

 

On Male Entitlement: “Water”

SW 2

In the southern suburbs of Manhattan you’ll find these immense water towers. They hover above the rest of the city, providing high-pressure to showers and sinks across the Island with water that, allegedly, contains high levels of estrogen, but as anyone on the North Shore will tell you, there’s a filter for that.

It’s winter; one of those nights the snow is frozen solid to the ground and darkness spreads across the city at 4pm. We’re all inside Murphy’s—the place you find yourself when you get out of work late and you’re too tired to stay in The City. It’s a full house tonight; there’s this Guthrie-esque musician, he’s playing something John Mayer and we sway either because it’s nostalgic or from too much mulled wine.

Sylvie and I are plotting the matriarchy when Ben approaches. He’s tall, got this shaggy yellow hair and the forming of a goatee. He takes a seat, Budweiser in hand.

“How’s life treating ya, gals?” It’s been two years. He’s aged but in a sad way.

“What have you been up to?” I ask him.

“Been working lights at Rosie’s.”

“Any good shows this season?”

He scoffed. “Oklahoma again.”

“Cheers to that,” we drain our glasses together, old times, and Sylvie goes to the bar for another round. Ben turns to me, tilting his head in her direction.

“Damn, is she seeing anyone?” I can’t help but smile.

“Yeah, we’re together.” Beat. He snaps his head towards me.

“What? Like, you two?”

“Mhmm.”

“Is that even…possible?”

“It sure is.”

He considers it, takes a swig. “I could be into that, I guess.”

No one fucking asked you, Ben.

Sylvie comes back with two beers. I wrap my arm around her waist to make my point. Ben can’t decide if he’s disgusted or turned on.

“Whose place are we going to?” He asks. Sylvie shrugs. It’s like this: they always feel entitled to a space in your bed.

***

These words by Annie Rubin were inspired by the colour of Sarah Williams 

 

On Reclaiming Space: “Incense”

SW 3

Content Warning: Assault

My childhood cabin was built on an island that was built into a peninsula. At the top of that peninsula is another island, connected by an inconstant sandbar. No matter how many times I have crossed that sandbar, I have never made it past the tip of the island. Sometimes, I like to imagine that this sequence of islands never ends, that on the other side of the island is just another sandbar, although a search on Google maps suggests I’m wrong.

Crossing the sandbar is the closest I can come to walking on water. Between islands, the lake stretches out of view. Like the ocean. Like how I used to imagine the ocean.

Sometimes it is too windy, or rainy, or icy, or deep, or cold, or hot to cross. On those days I sit across the lake from the island and write about what might be on the other side. Sand fills my shoes, my shorts, gets under my nails.

Sometimes there are animal tracks on the sandbar and I wonder, if I ever do make it past the peak, whether I might be devoured by a cougar. Sometimes I can imagine myself as a deer. Not Bambi, but wild and afraid, at constant risk of being hunted or running in front of a truck.

I have a photo of the lake cast in ice: frozen waves caught in motion. What makes the shot so beautiful is that I almost died taking it, almost froze myself into the landscape.

The shore is sinking into the lake now, but I still recognize this spot. This is where he held me to a rock and put his hand down my pants. I remember that all I could think about were the bugs, how the mosquito bites would keep me up that night. I remember that as the moment I realized the difference between romance and romanticizing.

A frog rustled the leaves next to us. That was the summer of frogs – they were everywhere. You couldn’t drive down the street without crushing them. That was the summer of death, the air sick with hundreds of tiny dead bodies, and none of them princes.

Under sheets of snow, it has been hard not to long for summer. But what I hope for is not always what I get. I used to imagine a lot of things. Now I mostly get them wrong. My wrongness sees the flaws in what is right.

It snowed again in the city and a stranger grabbed my arm in the station. I looked at his smile and didn’t know what to say.

I escaped to a bookstore. I noticed the shop smelled like my cabin and I told this to the cashier. “It’s the incense,” she told me, “to cover up the smell of rot.”

 

these words by Eileen Mary Holowka were inspired by the colour of Sarah Williams

On Vulnerability: “Forsaken Feathers”

d6ec2d17932945.562cbdc073c63

Two seagulls fly low, weaving underneath and above each other. Their interactions caught in a glimpse, mid-form. Black footprints upon the white glistening snow match these black tipped birds as they fly against white cloud. They weave underneath and above, through their mirrored existence. Our environment runs parallel to our creation; our image is chosen/created, our feathers with which we cloak ourselves.

Their flight draws my eyes down as they land on the branch above you. The wind dances through each branch of the tree, an invisible force that shakes the soul from complacency. That same wind blows your coat open from across the park. Stealing the air right out from my lungs, it continues to power through your feathers.

Above you, the leaves rustle against this force, and your subconscious proclamation of self exposes itself through vibrancy, a testament of individuality.   

I only see what you have conscripted to be yours. The cultivation of your portrayal is just an accumulation of elements favoured and adopted from others. (I would know.)

The tree above me is my own product. A manifestation of a lifetime of observation and careful selection, with cherished values, amplified desires, and distorted experiences.

My tree, your tree; up through the rough, textured trunk which grows stronger and taller with every opinion adopted. Each tree is an existential playground for us to swing, explore, and grow in our own identity: a branch for every joy, a root for every sadness. The forest of humanity lives and breathes, grows and dies. The leaves shed as seasons of growth embody the human condition of evolution. 

Who I am and how my tree grows is an elaborate reflection of all that I chose to define me.

Unfamiliar feathers tickle my chin. One leg wrapped around another hold us close. Velvety flesh sliding and sticking; we are but two trees in a winter forest. You’ve dominated my perception as shards of you sear into my skin. Hot breath heavy and damp pass between us… through us… The wind is still. There is but you and I. Aside from our biologies/biology, we are indistinguishable.

My tree will never stand as tall as it does in this immortal moment, next to you. Perhaps, before, it did, when we met in crisp white and black footprints.

Our fingers then fumbled with the buttons of our cloaks and we cautiously shed our defensive feathers, leaving them for the birds. The same feathers where we chose to hide ourselves left us in blank white nakedness. Nude from perception and projection, abandoning ego driven expectation.

But they will return, just as we must re-dress. And my walk, your eyes, my charm, your laugh, will carry on painting an image from borrowed colours. Each personalized tree a displayed collection of borrowed attributes. We can do nothing but motion forward in this jungle world, searching for those moments where our feathers shed and our trees stand taller than they have before.  

these words by Alexandra Sheffield were inspired by the colour of Raphael Varona 

From the author: “This art inspired an exploration on the self engineered image we wear for others recognition. Ones image as a lifetime of accumulative elements  becoming hypostatized as an emblematic tree.  How far are we willing to go to maintain this image?  When and for who do we drop the façade and allow ourselves to be exposed?”

 

On the Invisibility of Mental Illness

0373312716084.560145db8a3cf

“When Surviving Is Too Difficult”

They say that genius and madness are two sides of the same coin.

Well, my genius is elusive—I am descending into madness.

I feel crazy. Genuinely crazy.  I feel as if an intangible, impregnable, unidentifiable force is weighing down on me, is clouding my mind.

It limits my judgement and tests my patience. I am struggling to break free from my own self-imposed shackles.

It is difficult to be strong when I feel so mentally and physically weak.

The bones in my body are frail, my sanity is fragile. The bones in my body do not form a skeleton—they form a carcass.

I am carcass.

Inside this carcass is emptiness, but the emptiness has a heaviness of its own.

I am a victim of my insecurities.
I am overwhelmed by my shortcomings.
I am burdened by my expectations.

For some of us, surviving is too difficult. I am tired of battling against my own mind.

I am tired. I am tired. I am tired.

My mind is an incredible thing, its capacity is endless; yet it continues to torment me.

these words by Fiona Williams were inspired by the colour of Alex Andreev

On Masculinity and Relationships: “When I’m Alone”

andreev

I’m pretty sure she fucked her ex at a wedding once. I mean I can’t be sure but I think that’s probably what happened.

When she’s away I wear the same pair of underwear at least two days in a row. I throw a little party for myself in the kitchen with a bottle of wine and I cook food that I know I won’t have to share. I always thought, Why does dad make spicy food when mom’s gone? Why does he cook steak?

            When we first got together (yes it was summer, and yes it was humid, and yes the light on her face through the lace curtains in her room was dappled and soft) we would talk about how we’d never cause each other any pain. We would talk about how we should never leave the bed and we would wish we never got hungry or thirsty. We would scrunch up our eyes and wish we never had to get up to go to the bathroom.

            She goes away on business sometimes or to visit her mother in Vancouver. I don’t know what she does while she’s there. I send her text messages and ask her what she’s doing. But I don’t tell her I’m sitting by the kitchen window eating a whole pizza, getting drunk and chain-smoking to reruns of Seinfeld with my laptop on the table.

            The two of them went to this wedding together and it was no big deal because we’d just spent a whole week in bed wishing we didn’t have to go out to buy milk. Now that we live together, I think about it. Some time I’m going to ask her, Did you sleep with Bryan at the wedding? (I won’t say fuck him, I’ll ask if she slept with him.) Or I’ll say, I know you slept with Bryan at that wedding. 

            I always clean the apartment before she comes home. She brings it up when we fight, that I don’t ever finish cleaning the place. I’ve always got laundry to do and it takes a long time to vacuum the carpet. I’m usually hungover so it takes more time than I thought it would.  

            Once she’s back, I apologize. I ask her how her trip was and I make a salad or pasta for dinner, then we eat in front of the TV.

              When she’s home I go out for walks by myself.

these words by Sandy Martin were inspired by the colour of Alex Andreev

On Child Abuse: “The Intentions of Wolves”

1948225_10155178767665048_1187957752347932746_n

this piece of art, “breathe,” was created by loish

6. TIN ROOFS SPLIT THE SKY LIKE MOUNTAINS. The spring of a summer door would creak when stretched, as rust spreads when left unchecked. The gap in the wire fence was never discussed

5. Questions from visitors regarding the fence deflated conversations. Topics were then rerouted by the parent, such as an investigation on whose boots had sunk in the mud behind the pines, near a canister of roaches. The children were tense during these reroutes as though a house of cards was shivering with laughter.

4. Others addressed it with polite warning, as when a police officer flashes their lights. The parent would return from these talks to nod at children on staircases, as though the neighbouring guests of the same hotel.

Or, they were picked up.

“I love you, you know that?

3. Morning silences balanced these night enthusiasms. The children were well-aware of the emotional see-saw and did their best to avoid existing as the balance. Gaps in the fence were large enough that you could fit if you got down on your knees or if you were dragged through on your back. Of course visitors with gaps in their fences shared great laughs in our house.

2. Sometimes, deer would approach the back windows that faced the woods. You’d turn from the TV, and there would be two, three deer, spotted white, watching you. They would approach me in the yard. There we’d stand, looking at the other. There was tension in the lines of their muscled haunches. Then the door might creak open and my dog might run them back toward the pines. Their white tails would flip over the field’s weeds, never tripping over objects that were entombed in the grass, close but never caught by the dog.

1. You’d see them on the side of roads, too, with their necks twisted: bodies toward the road, eyes to the trees. In the winter, their blood spattered over snow-covered roads. In the summer, the warm liquid poured out to fill in creases of the cement.

0

1. I lived in this house for ten years. There wasn’t a fence, but the driveway was made of gravel. As many people know, surviving one of these houses often means leaving. The borders of a driveway give promise to understand who one is or can become without the dynamic of the abused and the abuser. Crossing the border at the end of the lane is often complicated by the fact the attacked is told to be lying, where the abusive parent may discount the uncomfortable truths being shared through threats, a defensiveness which underlines their guilt and shock at the inconvenient possibilities of your voice.

2. Yes, the deer would actually come up to our windows. Half of our house faced a forest, and they’d cross the long weeds to stand on our stone patio and look inside our living room.

3. I wonder if a deer’s ears are like a dog’s ears, and if they could hear through the windows.

4. When I’d see one strung up in a friend’s garage, leaking blood into a bucket, I was perhaps more affected, as though I’d lost a witness who could testify in a case I never wanted to attend.

5. Abusers are insulated by the glorification of keeping family secrets and a culture of stoicism in Ontario. My masculinity amplified this silence and abusive power relies on a special status treatment of silence. If attacked on the street, most people would call the police partially to prevent others from being attacked.*

4. I cannot speak for other members of my family. 

3. It is often this inability to share and process trauma with strangers or friends that will prompt people to become violent later on to cope with feelings of vulnerability. The saying goes, “although not all children who were abused grow up to become abusers, the vast majority of those who abuse were abused as children.”My ability to move from that tendency involves a lot of work and privileges.

4. It is the responsibility of the violent to adopt methods of coping with stress or trauma that do not require the destruction of the minds and bodies of those around them. 

3. Processes of accountability with violent parents require the parent to acknowledge that violence occurred. As acknowledging abuse is acknowledging ‘imperfection,’ tactful rearrangements of memory are often made to lighten the case. (See: ‘it wasn’t my intention’ defenses of racism.) 

2. No person should be shamed for choosing to start such a process with someone who has been violent to them. 

1. No person whose survival is in spite of the attempts of a parent should be blamed for walking away from that person. Shaming this individual should be taken as seriously as shaming someone who avoids snakes because they have been bitten by snakes. 

2. No person exists to be the emotional or physical punching bag for another person to deal with their issues, whatever the complex histories of that person.

1. Those who rush to support the ‘loving’ defense of abuse (“but they love them!”) often reveal the blades in their own hands.

2. There is no ‘complete’ escape from the house that influenced so much of who I am and how I’m writing to you today. 

2. You don’t arrive at zero during a process of rewiring. It’s instead some hybrid form which works to pivot from a new set of values. Gravel is not asphalt and even asphalt splits depending on the heat. Delaying the desire for change and accountability makes sense if it is antagonistic to one’s mental health. Neurologist Gabor Maté convincingly argues that rewiring processes can begin at any age, contrary to the whole old dogs saying.

1. Our bedrooms were on the top floor of the log house. Sleeping under a tin roof meant that you could hear every drop of the rain. The thousands of sounds felt like blankets at night, reminding you how close you were to being outside.

The intentions of wolves

From the author:

“The choice to share my story was influenced by a recent reading by poet Jessica Bebenek, as well as a November reading by Kalale Dalton-Lutale.

The piece of art, “breathe,” was created by loish.

*What the criminal justice system chooses to do with violent offenders is certainly in need of radical change, however the existence of the impulse to prevent violence through accountability is significant.

Further reading: Maté, Gabor. In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts.