Dust

| 15 |

- Stella, are you listening?

Eyes fluttering, steady breathing.

- Stella, are you sleeping?

No response, as I lay on a makeshift bed on her floor.

I feel my heart rhythm flat line for a minute, waiting for a movement in the deadly silence before continuing.

- I am going to tell you a secret. I am going to tell how I began realizing I was losing it. Are you listening?

Not a sound made it's way through the universe held within her four walls. I proceed in recounting events that left me guiltless, and guilty for not regretting them.

- It happened in the summer, when the temperature started rising and everyone wore t-shirts. By then I had run out of acceptable reasons to pull off long sleeves in the scorching heat.
I used to ask my mom to bring home rubber bands from work, pretend that I needed them to tie around books she printed.

Lowering my voice barely above the buzzing of the washing machine, I decide to switch to the past, like it is all behind me. A silly story of silly things little girls do.

- With my forearms exposed, the thin vertical lines faded, so yellow rubber bands wrapped around my feet. I'd snap it on the top part, it would hurt like hell, leave the skin red raw. As the rubber stretched with use, I'd pull it up until it was painful to put on a pair of socks.
  I have but the faintest clue why I did it. In my wrists the reasoning was simple, practice for the main event, proverb is final bow in front of empty theater seats. But my feet? I don't know why they had to suffer in the summer, they just did.
  If I dwell on it, maybe I was hoping someone would notice something was seriously wrong. I am a deeply disturbed individual, hell bent on acts of self destruction, inwards and outwards, and I never did it for attention. Yet that action of bruising and bleeding the skin was aimed at opening the door for a deeper discussion.
  I guess that in my head, if someone saw what I did they'd pick up on the fact that something inside was killing me. Maybe they'd get me help.
  Of course, this is all conjecture, by that time my mind was so riddled with landmines I'm surprised I could even form coherent thoughts.
  Who knows, maybe I was a masochist who got off on it.
 
I whisper so quietly.

- How sad is it that I'm hoping for the latter?

I eye suspiciously the edge of her bed. Not a single shuffling on sheets, not a word pronounced about it. I wait anxiously for the light of her alarm clock to reflect on her eyes, informing me she was awake for the speech I so carelessly delivered.

Nothing came of it.

I tried to close my eyes but I couldn't sleep. I will never again talk about this to someone who isn't dead.