Power Before the Time of the Foxes

When I was 15 I drew the shiny pin of a protractor along the crook of my arm. By the time you are 15, can you have read enough books to discover all feelings? I mean, I don’t exactly know what I’m trying to say or what I was trying to do but maybe I’ve been experimenting with feelings since before words. I’ve always loved excavators of the mind. I see philosophers crawling through the abyss with their questions and hearing what?

I had long hair the colour of ash, long legs, and big quiet eyes. I had a library card. I had a craft knife in a shade of appalling orange. I used it to cut 22 lines in parallel on my thigh in the dark. I was slow, I was methodical, I didn’t breathe. I stood in my underwear in front of the mirror and tilted my head to one side. There was blood and it was running like a slow creek, like in the movies before there’s a flood. It looked like pieces of the night sky coming out of me without light. I felt powerful, like I had achieved something.

Where does the line blur between control and addiction? Is it a matter of time or intensity? One day I traced a circle around my wrist. Any semblance of power had vanished and I felt dizzy, scared, and disgusted. Science cannot calculate the width of our emotions. Blood does nothing for distance.

A doctor once asked me, “did it hurt?” Like that has anything to do with it. A lady in a white room once told me I was too young to be here.

At 20 I couldn’t stand the feeling of fullness. I made lists. Food without colour and weight went on one and everything else went on the other. I named them good and bad. It was easy, it was simple. It became a whole world laid out in front of me that I could follow. Breakfast became running, lunch became a joke. I moved cities and became a ghost at supermarkets, desperately hoping no one would notice as I spent hours picking things up and putting them back then leaving with a bottle of water. I would pass cafe goers on the main street, dabbing at morsels of food like birds of prey and think ‘slaves’ and feel strong. Strength is holding street signs while your vision goes blurry. Strength is bruises from your own bones. I met a boy who took off my clothes and said, “shit, you’re so skinny.” I felt proud. I felt this is fucked up. I hope people making sense is overrated.

When I was 22 I had one cigarette with three cups of coffee in the morning. I buried the ends in the garden and marked their places with little headstones. At night I danced in dresses and sneakers and learnt how to make rings that would float out past the lights on the waterfront. On the other side of the world I bought slim packs in French and felt sophisticated. I imagined my little pink lungs and wondered if they were turning grey. I stopped for months like it was nothing just to start again just to stop again just to whatever.

I want to know what happened to my little graveyard. I heard they renovated the garden and dug everything up.

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