by Erin Shea

I feel the urge to dissect a peach with gloves on. Slide the knife beneath the fuzzy, flimsy skin and pretend to be a doctor.

It’s so weird when you think about it. That people are trained to cut open other people. That surgeons feel that foreign warmth of flesh and blood beneath their hands in a routine, procedural way.

If I were a surgeon, I would go home after each deadening shift and stare at my veins.

Perhaps I’ve been spending too much time in hospitals.

Everything sounds so bare and gruesome, cast in the burning horror of fluorescent lighting.

Let me backtrack.

Back before the weather changed...I’ll call it “the other day”—it sounds fonder. Yes, the other day, I went to buy cat food. My poor lanky animal was down to the dregs of old tuna fish cans.

The local pet food store is about the size of a rich person’s walk-in closet. It’s charming but cramped. Overflowing with products that contribute to that signature sour smell. Petco smell. Animal smell minus the animals.

I got ready at an unremarkable, sluggish pace. The energy drought of mid-day. A failing body. August has always been so cruel. My car, equally worn in the heat wave, made exasperated sounds the whole three and a half miles. My brakes desperately needed work. I tried not to go over 40.

I pulled shakily into the corner of the run-down strip mall. It’s a family-owned operation. They have a “Back the Badge” sign tacked to their front window, which I always try and ignore. A man in the parking lot waved his cigarette and asked for a light. I deflected and locked my car.

I want to say that the front door chimed when I opened it, but I may have imagined it. I’ve been told that I have an overactive imagination. It’s kept me home most of my life.

You see, I have to figure out every infinitesimal thing that happens to me. Boot up the memory footage and sort my way through. Figure out how much I trust my own brain. My perception of things. Memories are like bruises to me now. Random and sudden. They appear in various degrees of ache and discomfort, and I have to figure out where they came from. Remind myself that they are indeed tied to me. On me. Within me. They have to be mine...existing only because they’re tethered to my recollections. Reaffirming them. Who got hurt?

The man in the shop is unboxing sacks of kibble on the other side of the aisle. There are only two. One for cats and one for dogs. He quickly comes over to introduce himself. Offer assistance. I can’t recall his name. I just know I gave him mine. It felt oddly natural to do. Like a rom-com introduction. It felt like small-town etiquette.

The idea that someone else—a stranger—knows your name is its own paltry form of existence. That day it felt like the world and more. It felt like growth. Yes, indeed, I exist and am perceived by others. In pieces. Even for just a moment.

I’ve turned into a bit of a recluse. I admit it. I own up to it. This is because the more I go out, the more memory content I have to sort through at home. There’s a significant processing time, this interim period, between living and perceiving.

This reclusive processing period has led to many things. One of which is a severe case of procrastination in running basic errands. Hence, my angry, lanky cat. It’s also led to my affinity for painting my nails. I got so good at it that I could do it in my sleep. Blindfolded, even. A quirky party trick.

Most recently, it’s led to a habit of watching my hands. A sort of grounding technique. Though it backfires terribly during a dissociative episode. I’m watching them as I pick up cans of cat food thoughtfully and place them in a little cardboard box. I’m watching them as I grip the steering wheel. I'm watching them as I lie in bed in the evening.

I always paint my nails the same color. A tried-and-true hue. Chinchilly, it’s called. It’s somewhere between purple and gray—morbid enough for my taste. It feels befitting, not ornamental. On a bad day, it complements my darkening nail beds. An assurance.

I never take my Chinchilly off with acetone. I commit to the color. I commit to its lifespan. It’s not just that I hate the smell of the chemical remover. The soaked, discolored cotton balls. It’s also that I need the assurance of something cyclical, of something coming and going, fading without animus, without protest.

After I pay for the cat food, the man I gave my name to makes an effort to shake my hand. He says, once again, that it was good to meet me, and to come back soon. Come back.

I know I’ll spend the next few days trying to decipher what his hand meant to me, the undertones of his friendliness, his yellow-toothed smile. I’ve become much too suspicious of human touch.

Back home, I undress for a midday shower. The toilet handle is staring me down as I wait for the water to heat. I stare right back at it and see a mass of flesh trapped in its silver surface. I focus my stare on this mundane accessory to avoid looking at my face in the mirror. There’s nothing I hate more. Not my face, I mean. It’s more the projection of me. I hate its vulgar clarity.

I don’t know if it's an anomaly in my bodily functioning, but I can never focus my eyes when
looking at my own reflection. Everything feels lopsided; my eyes, uneven. Abnormal.

I’ve always carried this tilt to my features—from the lopsided grin of my youth to the haphazard swelling of one lone breast. Is a body supposed to feel unified?

The shower water feels unwelcome today. But there’s no use fighting it. My head is hollow and I’m starting to shake. Poor lanky cat is outside the bathroom door, two white paws are poking out beneath. I’ll feed him later.

First, I have to wash myself procedurally, how you would an animal. Scratching a dog’s head. The mindlessness of it lets my mind wander elsewhere. Tread into frames of memory footage. Unwillingly. As if in a trance.

There’s one half-buried memory in the shower with me. Mom is washing out my hair with a plastic floral cup. Magenta in color. I can picture it vividly. But I can’t remember what it was like to lean back and close my eyes. I want to feel her hand on my forehead again. My own touch has become brutally impassive.

Unthinkingly, I’m feeling inside my mouth, grabbing onto my teeth. They’re deviating from the mold of the retainer from my adolescent mouth. The memory track skips and falters, switches to the last time I was at the dentist. The dripping sink. My head, fuzzy. Then I’m back at the hospital, the nurse is helping me pull my pants down. My body is scarred by indignity. My head swims with remembrance, cursing me with a disjointed identity. Who was I in a hospital bed? At the store? Who was I three minutes ago?

The drain is clogged up again. Water is pooling at my feet and rising. It makes everything louder, the sound of splatter. It echoes. It swallows me up. I feel that if I attempted to speak, I wouldn’t be able to hear my own voice.

Or, if I were able to conjure the words. A scream. A whisper. It would get submerged in the water and sucked down the drain.

I need agency. I need to assert myself in this moment. Looking at my hands won’t suffice. So I reach for my earrings, tangled in my hair, and pull them out hastily, hanging my neck to watch them head straight for the open drain.

I’m leaving my mark here.

I let the small diamond studs sink soundlessly...for no other reason than to know that something of mine will stay, even in the murk and grime of a drainpipe. Something residual and hidden. Something that serves to prove that I lived, however vaguely.

Back before all the hospital stays, before I began to recognize in earnest that my disease was progressive and therefore inescapable, there was a time when perception was less demanding. A time before stillness turned sour. When I trusted what my eyes laid before me. A time when I slept and awoke with such constancy, I thought it was God.

Now, the interminable ache and frenzy of this body that keeps me alive has latched onto my mind, torn into the heart of my self-perception. The two lay intertwined like lovers, buried alive. What else is courage than being trapped?

Out of the shower, I stare back down at my hands. Habit. Chinchilly has faded incrementally, but I dare not chip off the remaining pieces. I dare not be hasty but, rather, let everything take its course. This shower, this day, this life.

My hair is dripping sporadically on the tile floor as I take off all my rings one by one and lay them on the counter purposefully—artifacts of pause—wondering who would do this for me if I was dead.

Lanky cat scratches at the door again and relieves me of the trance.

I’ll feed him once more.

Chinchilly

Murmuration

My Condolences

ARTWIFE