one time late last year i hit an artery near my pelvic bone and didn't stop bleeding profusely for 16 hours (i should really wash the clothes that soaked it up) and i've seen my muscle and i've seen my severed veins pump out blood in the rhythm of my heartbeat as they tried desperately to continue on with their job and i've inserted pen ink into my skin with old sewing needles and stabbed cheap tarnished metal through my tongue and kept it there and overdosed on some shit that's supposed to ruin the rest of your life if you survive (something with neurological deficits and motor control and end-organ damage but who needs nostalgia or cautious movement or a fully functioning vessel anyways) and never once have i sought out assistance with any of these issues nor did i bother to properly care for them after they had occurred and somehow i haven't suffered any real consequences. i fell through the ice on a lake behind a bar at age 9 with only the kid of some family friend and drunk men too far away to hear me around to help and god pulled me back up soaked through with icy water and said look, child, this will happen often. you will feel the ground fall out from under you and you will laugh as you fall. on the way back up, too. and when your mother yells about your soaked dress you will fake fawn eyes and apologize and think to yourself what a beautiful thing it is to wonder whether or not the ice will let you back out, let you breathe again. i think that may have been one of the first times i felt alive, or maybe it was when i was younger and in hawaii and a wave three times the size of my father (and to me he was the tallest man around, even when he cowered, even now) came crashing towards us and i turned to run while he grabbed me and tried to throw me over the crest of it only to smash my face into salt and blue. we've always had different methods of escaping things like this. and my eyes stayed open for a moment under the water, saw a blue i haven't seen since, and i didn't even realize i was already holding my breath until the wave rolled my body onto the sand after 10 seconds of being at her mercy (if you've ever been tumbled by a wave, you know that 10 seconds can feel like forever) and she was trying to teach me something i think, maybe how to relax and take it when circumstances require. but i only paused to get the hair out of my eyes before running back into the ocean; the tide drew back as if she didn't expect it. i think the first lesson i learned was at age 5, maybe 6, when i was trailing along beside my childhood dog playing mother and pup (i've always wanted a body other than mine) and she growled and i thought she was pretending to talk with me and i pressed into her side and she turned and snapped and bit my lip. i cried less because it hurt and more because my parents made her sleep in the garage. she licked my face after and i told her she didn't need to be sorry. i think today i treat myself the same. i think today i secretly hope that someone will bite and when they don't i sink my teeth into my own arm just to prove i can take it. just to feel the ground fall out from under me again; just to laugh again on the way back up.
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