I moan a little. It's small. I don't open my eyes. I lie there in the sepulchral silence of myself. The tiniest fibre in me moves. Stirs. Finds a fascinating fluidity of expression and moves in my pinky. My pinky tingles with energy. I move it. I move it again. I move my other fingers in my right hand. I feel needles down my spine, down my legs, down my ribs, my sides, my ribs digging into the earth. My hip-bones digging into the earth. My right cheekbone digging into the earth. My left eye trembles open. A rush, a heap of light floods in and explodes my iris into a rainbow that never ends, that never fades. This is the first part of the day. This is the purest I've felt since my insides moved beside the earth. Twisting, fashioning life, manufacturing breath further, foggy into the earth, into the grass, into the mud.
I have been asleep for a long time. I don't know how long. No one asks. No one around. I gather the tiny fusion of energy in my pinky and project it into my spine to raise. I raise. I anchor my right hand into the earth and use its stability to raise so I can see the bleeding lit sky. The sky is bleeding cool pink and orange and its orgiastic fury entices me to stretch. I stretch. I stretch my left side into the sky. It feels good. The cracks accompany the dawn. A collection of bones and their wind chimes championing the light, riding alongside it, enticing, coaxing, celebrating. I am celebrating. I am happy. I am awake. I am awake.
I look around. No snail. No one. Scattered leaves hidden under a perfect bejewelled carpet of snow. Crisp and clean and smelling fresh and naked.
I wish I were naked too. I am not naked. I am clothed and soaking. I stretch my legs, my legs, my legs legs legs. I point my toes the direction they naturally tend to. I ask them, "dearest toes, is this the way?"
They don't answer. They're toes. They are toes. I get up. Shake off the snowy wetness, the fluffy heaviness and go that way anyways.
My cheeks, cold rose stones.
I walk a little wobbly.
I have been sleeping a really long time. I have been sleeping.
-
"My goodness Joce, what the fuck?"
"I know"
I crash into the dorm baths. I stumble over porcelain toilets and porcelain bathtubs until I find the filthiest one. Pieces of knotted hair in the drain. Lurking. Streaks of brown and purple down its sides. Perfect.
I collect the knotted hair. I celebrate its knot. Its art. Its unconscious and unconscionable existence. I throw it out. I clean the brown and purple with my hands. The burning water burning me. Burning the filth. I recognize the qualifiers I would have otherwise annotated this set with. When I finish the filthiest, I move onto the next one. I labour. I am cold, but the burning is helping with the cold.
The burning is helping with the cold.
Ryan turns around. In bed. Ryan turns around and puts his hand around my waist. He finds the sweet spot. Where my stomach meets my lowest rib. The undulating softness that bends and yields his way. That tightens with expectation and widens with breath. "Joce, you know, I don't want you to go"
I swallow my spit. I hold my eyes tightly shut.
He takes my hand. Kisses every fingerprint away. I'm anonymous again. I am a body in a white, clean bed. He holds my left breast. I lick his index finger.
The cold invites the burning. When I finish cleaning the bathtubs, I start cleaning the toilets. In a similar fashion. I clean everything in the communal bath. Everything. I wipe every mirror. I resist to look. I want to look. Against myself, I don't look. I haven't looked in a mirror since I fell asleep beside the snail ages ago. Ages ago.
Ryan turns me around. I don't look at his face. I want to. I resist to look. I want to look. Against myself, I don't look. I look at the dawn. Its colours surfacing, like newly-born fireflies. Materializing gently out of nature. Materializing gently.
I shed my leaking clothes. It feels good. I'm skin and bone. Skin and bone. There is nothing left. There is so little left of the little that was to begin with.
I want to burn my clothes. My mind, a fucking carousel, is also leaking. My mind is a tiny box a child is shaking with delight. Shaking all the thoughts out of it. Professors, esteemed authors, dead philosophers, my mom, my dad, my mom, my mom, my dad, my friends, my lovers, my boyfriends, my ex-boyfriends, my soulmates, my doubles, my triples, my triples. All leaking out. All honorary, temporary guests who have overstayed their welcome. Shaken out on a child's whim and crumbling to the washed floor. The floor I washed for their demise. They drain. They disappear down the pipe. I know not where they go. I care not. I care. I care not. I care. No, I care. But I am beginning.
Ava wakes in the hole. The last heap of dirt. The last heap of dirt coming down with the force of bricks on her resting place.
Mama wakes at the french party. Mama starts and drops a scone.
Madalena falls asleep near the well's mouth. Her lovely head drooping ever closer to the delicately imposed reflection in its murky rainwater.
Maria waked under the weight of a handsome man moving inside her.
I fill the bathtub with water. Clear, clear water. I step in. The burning water tingles like ice. I like it. I go all in. I scrub my face, my neck, my back, my toes, everything. I scrub everything. Red appears and multiplies down my legs, my arms, my chest, and although I can't see my face I feel I am feverish. I am bursting with warmth.
Ryan looks into me. I want him out.
"You know, real painters actually paint"
"And real bitches bite"
"At least I leave marks"
He's upset.
"You're so fucking clever aren't you?"
I feel sorry for him. A handsome man pushed to the brim, rejected, pushed out. I think I used Ryan. This was never going to work anyways. What is long-distance? What does it mean? How can it work?
How can it work when my heart is beating a thousand miles away in a shitty bed under shitty covers he can't fathom smelling me into them ever? I give up. I light one, and start to look for my leg-warmers.
"Just drop me off at the station"
"You think you can just disappear and materialize and what Joce?"
Maria is lovelier than ever. Her hair is darker now, her skin - lighter. Maria, maria. So beautiful. Like a fairytale. Like a fairytale. Oh beautiful Maria, you've made me so happy. You've made me happier than I thought I could be. In my mangled sadness.
So, clean and ready and wearing nothing I walk back into my dorm room. I resist. I resist. Oh God, I resist and resist. Dizzy and angry and feeling a million things at once, I stand in my room and make a choice that saves me. I make the right choice. The choice not to pack my bags (again) and leave. The choice to stay. I choose to stay and instead I move the furniture around. The choice to stay feels the way you do when your body needs to throw up and all of a sudden feels better. That I'm not knotted anymore. That I've been straightened out. The way you feel after a fever has ravaged your body and you can sink into your sheets and feel the sun beat on your clean face and understand it will do that for hundreds years more if my cells would let it.
I move the bed and angle it differently. I angle my bed and transform it into a prism. Change my sheets. Only white. I throw out the pinks and purples and blues. I throw it out. My bed will catch sunlight in the morning and transform it. Transform me. Every morning I will wake in a prism. The way I woke up the first day I realized I wasn't going anywhere. Not anymore.
After what seems like hours, I am finished. With my room. I put on some black pants, a white shirt. Still haven't looked in the mirror. I comb my hair. Threw away my eye colours, my lip-stick. Who needs them? Ryan taught me you can't paint when there's nothing you want to paint. There is nothing I want to paint on myself. Not a thing. No thing. The way Madalena says it. No thing. Disparately. Nothing.
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