Losing the WarThe dark crowded around her like a pack of starved vampires. She gasped for breath against the oppressive shadows. Her throat felt stuffed with hurt and she tried to swallow but only managed a sob.
'Too much, all too
much' she
thought as she sank to the floor and curled there like a beaten dog while the
pain washed over her with vicious kicks. Gasping and panting, she tucked her
head under her arms, trying to hide, hoping to die. She needed it, craved it,
tried to hold it close as a long lost love, but it slipped through her fingers
every time.
The beating of her
heart was a jackhammer ripping through the concrete of her sanity. She could
feel it, chipping away shard by shard until she must surely shatter. 'Why
didn't it stop?' She closed her eyes against the manic thunder pulsing
through the pounding veins in her forehead. 'God it hurt so fucking much!'
Pain ran from her eyes and left her weak. Even the stained carpet against
her cheek felt like needles whose only purpose was to torture what was left of
her spirit.
It had to end.
She struggled to
her hands and knees, blinded by tears. Their taste was so familiar to her now
she could remember nothing else ever having passed her lips. Coughing and
gulping air, she groaned as she staggered to her feet. The effort left her
dizzy and panting as she fumbled toward the hall in a daze, her chest so tight
with sorrow and frustration every step was an effort of sheer screaming will.
Make it stop.
Reaching the
bathroom, she leaned on the doorframe and felt around for the switch. Closing
her eyes on a fresh wave of brilliant ache, she braced herself on the
counter, head sagging between her shoulders. The ceramic and tile echoed her
whimpering cries back to her ears in a chorus of woe. Closing her hand around
the first solid object she felt, she picked it up quickly and swung. Glass
rained sharply around her from the shattered mirror, but she faced it with a
broken smile, finally able to look up and face the remains of herself in the
spiderweb of cracks, a mosaic of pain that somehow satisfied her waning sense
of balance.
Her eyes lowered,
drawn to the shimmering knives beckoning on the counter. Tenderly, she picked
one of the glass fragments up. It lay across the palm of her hand like a
sudden gift from the goddess of tears. She stroked it gently, caressing a
sliver of memory too fragile to touch. Closing her hand around it, she
squeezed, exchanging one ache for another. A hiccup of pain shook her
shoulders then quelled to mere shuddering breaths. When she looked down once
more at her crystal dagger, only bleak calm remained in her darkened eyes. She
watched red drops fall slowly to stain the carpet at her feet. Lifting the
glass, she placed its coolness against her cheek. Eyes closed for a moment on
another time, another place, she felt the thrilling heat of flesh on her cheek
beyond the edge of pain. Turning her head, the bite of glass on her lips broke
the reverie. She tasted blood among the tears. She dragged the point of the
glass lightly over her chin and along the line of her throat from her ear
toward her shoulder. Ever so lightly, like fingertips, or taunting
fingernails...
Holding
tenuously to something far beyond the pain, she embraced it, point first, and
let the hurt seep slowly away.
© Sonja Torres 2001
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