Six months ago, I was lacerated down the middle of my torso.
My skin was numb for a day, as i stared down at the yellow grid of my ribs.
A red so deep I could almost call it black.
As it poured and poured, I couldnāt get it to stop.
I called the hospital, but they had somewhere else to be. I could get in on Monday or Tuesday, they said. It was Friday.
My friends tried to help, but their stitches drawn by an at-home sewing kit snapped immediately.
So I poured even further. But this time the pain didnāt catch me so off guard, and the it rushed through me worse than before.
For a weekend my blood poured. I cursed God for letting me bleed so much.
A deep stain spread further along my bedsheets, neighbors wondering if something had died. But it was a smell so deeply human, it couldnāt be an animal. I wondered if the police would knock on my door.
They would smell the nights I spent running about my neighborhood, every creation I made with chalk, every mistake I ever made, and everything I had done to try and be good.
I woke up in the morning thinking it was all a dream, but the harsh beating of my disconnected veins brought me back to reality. My ascension halted as they wrapped my ankles and dragged me back into this filthy, open sack
I dragged myself along the harsh concrete, hanging on to the hope that I could be fixed, as my body inched along the block to the hospital. It was Monday, an end dangling before me.
The woman at the front desk sighed, calling over a janitor to mop up the mess I had made across the lobby.
Tuesday wouldāve been easier, they said, but they begrudgingly let me see a doctor after my pleads became grating.
Tears ran hot on my face as the doctor looked at me, uncaring. They said that there was nothing they were able to do. They couldnāt handle seeing my entrails and blood, it disgusted them. So they sent me away.
I felt as if I had failed, as I dragged my sluggish flesh back home.
A month went by, and every time I thought I had closed it, every time I tried my own devices to put myself back together, I always found myself feeling that initial rush of pain again. My chest would explode open, tearing further than it had before.
The first three months, I was glad to at least still have my friends. They checked on me, came to my bedside and helped me cry out the horrors.
After four, they stopped reaching out. So I began to. I needed their gauze, a soft pressure on my wound, someone to tell me that it was okay to cry. A body to wipe up the pools of blood, one that wouldnāt just bleed them back immediately.
After five, I lost them. One told me I was done seeing him, done coming around. The trails of deep red had stained his carpet, messes not worth keeping. They had all felt that way, he was just the only one honest enough to be blunt with me.
It has been six months, and my skin has molded, bubbling with spots of white and green. But the laceration is still raw, still beats. My blood continues to pour as it has thickened, turning a deep brown.
But there are times when it feels better, I try to act normal, not let this living wound control me.
But yesterday, I went on a walk. I never go on those anymore. All was normal, well normal for me, until I leaned down to look at some wildflowers.
My intestines spilled out onto the once vibrant colors, splattering them with rot and curdled blood.
The hospital has banned me, they donāt accept my repeated calls. My pain was too much, there was nothing they could find to make it subside.
It wasnāt their fault that there was nothing they could do, but it wasnāt mine either.
The doctor, the woman a the front desk, they get to move about the rest of their lives and let my sorry sight fade into the past. But I still have to bleed, still have to stare deep into my exposed core every day.
I feel like I am being punished for a pain that I had never asked for.
So now I must live on without my intestines, something that I will forever and always not have anymore.
Iām young, but the life ahead of me will never be what I had wanted. I cannot create a single new memory that will not be shadowed by this tear in my chest, that now breaches from my throat to my navel.
There is not a way to make it stop growing. At least, not by myself. And I am all that I have now.
Iām not sure how to live on. I beg my veins to run dry, to let my brain callous over, finally shut down. The only release in sight would be succumbing.
But my body wonāt let me, so it keeps bleeding.
Residual Energy
