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The Fruit is Depressed Again
by Taylor Bond I. The places where I cut myself puckered like citrus, like a cross-section of an pink grapefruit ! spliced in two halves. When I cut myself ! I sometimes pretend I’m a surgeon and my hands don’t even tremble —I hold the razor, the scalpel, whatever I find that day, in between my hands, nestled between my palm and every finger clenched with my thumb pressing down hard on the metal neck. It’s only an instrument, I’m just shaping things, just shaving. It’s not traditional, the way I do things. My scars look like dried brown leopards spots, ! not the pale lattice of zebras, because I scoop among the surface instead of diving as far as I can do against my veins. If anyone tells you sadness isn’t physical, they’re lying. II. The physical is real, it’s the only thing you can feel, and talk to anyone who’s ever had depression if they could experience anything outside of their pain. They can’t. It’s this gnarled pit that wriggles and coils, weaving through your body with arms like metal, and it starves you of yourself. And it’s there, it’s always there and you can feel it and you need it out, there is nothing ! else you need in the world except for this parasite, this thing, to be out of you. So you attack it. With razors, with scalpels, with whatever you can find that day. You can’t stop it, you can only distract it. |
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