Of Variants and Subspecies

Last night I had a dream in which my underwear ate me. It actually wasn’t as simple as that though.

I’m convincing myself this is finally a series of emotional responses manifesting themselves inside me, subconsciously. Friday is -the- day and I haven’t talked about it, haven’t researched it, have pretty much walked around and avoided it. Right now I need to speak about the underwear, so I am.

Despite how interested people appear to be, they are not. It’s politeness that stirs them to adequate responses, sometimes even to inquiries, but interest, pure human interest, no. You can see it in their eyes after their question isn’t replied to they way they thought it might have been. Retreat. Wall. Silence.

And you’re left holding yourself inside, ready to go further, but unable to because there is no one.

This is what it is like. Hyper extended imaginary tentacles reaching for tentative connection; a word, an opening, an unguarded doorway half cracked like myself. They shrink in their discoveries, whiter in repulsion at the extent of personal costuming, and sag with the weight of a heavy heart.

If days were more than the skins we wear, we’d be cut deep with revelations and skinned bare: bones marring our surrounding surfaces like chalk.

I see you: snakes coiled behind stilted white planks and flat unresponsive orbs.

The underwear had teeth around the support band. Slowly like a row of scissors, slicing to and fro, they consumed my lower half. Hips, legs, and unused womanly bits disappearing beneath a neatly amputated crimson band. It felt like hundreds of little feet, circling my diameter.

I woke up half of myself, sweaty.

Everything I draw is gutty and visceral. My insides hurt and the pills make me sick. People I know say things like “Feel better” or “I hope you’re feeling better” or “It could be worse.” Their kindnesses scrape me. Their silences punch holes into my reality and let the salivating darkness in further.

I am weak and mean and unsympathetic. I curse my guts, loathe my colon, and ache for a life I wasted when it was far from perfect but so perfect compared to now.