we lost ourselves; python

"THERE'S A SPACE AT THE BOTTOM OF AN EXHALE, A LITTLE HITCH BETWEEN TAKING IN AND LETTING OUT THAT'S A PERFECT ZERO YOU CAN GO INTO. THERE'S A REST POINT BETWEEN THE HEART MUSCLE'S CLOSE AND OPEN - AN INSTANT OF KEENEST LIVING WHEN YOU'RE MOMENTARILY DEAD. YOU CAN REST THERE."

— lit: a memoir, mary karr

My name is Eris W., and I find myself looking back too many times that I’m not sure I’m even living. They look at me like that, those nurses with their pristine uniforms and caving gazes – I’ve lived here long enough to see that caring is no longer an option for them, and sometimes I find myself thinking whether we are humans at all. I’ve seen strangers trudge down the dirt path, their walking figures like clear silhouette cut-outs from my bedroom window, and I know there’s nothing much to salvage from distant observation but I just know – that they’re different. Different that they have a purpose, somewhere to walk to and some light burning inside their eyes and comparably alive to the walking ghosts trapped inside their own cells, their own four walls to rot in. We’ve got nowhere to go. We’re lost.

Doctors remember our names not by heart but through time, seeing as this has become a makeshift home for the homeless, for the ones left behind. We haven’t got a new patient in possibly a year, and I’m fairly certain the residents living within the Home’s parameters have forgotten this was a hospital, with its walls showing cracks and a fair amount of roof shingles falling apart, hanging on the roof ledge and pipes by a single corner, or have given up and completely disintegrated back to the ground. I don’t know much about the rest, but doing the latter wouldn’t be as half-bad. I’d never tell the others that, and I look away fast enough to avoid looking into their eyes as I say yet again, “We’re going to be fine.”

It’s becoming hard to know whether I was reassuring them, or myself.

It was no secret, at least, not between the doctors and I. I was brought into the Home once she discovered I was hacking up blood, then she never came back. Suppose I had a feeling on what was coming; she was never fond of me, never liking anyone who wasn’t her family (techinically I was, but she prefers to ignore that) and they kept giving me more medicine in just one sitting. Common sense tugged at me relentless, troubled into asking whether I was supposed to swallow everything all at once in just one day. The nurse let out a little laugh, then said, “Oh no, honey. Gradually.” Wheezing turned into small little coughs that didn’t hurt so much, and eventually the splattered blood against the white of the sink didn’t look so startling, until it finally disappeared.

Or at least we thought so.

I don’t remember the exact day (there were no calendars in the Home, in my knowledge, and I think we prefer it that way. It’s a bit mocking, when we’ve got nothing to look forward to) when all days just seem to mash with each other, a gray incomprehensible blend that’s impossible to pick apart when there’s nothing significant – not much with hospital paper work and seeing so much IV needles that I try to remember the time I was actually afraid of them. There’s nothing, except for the bated breath yet offhandly calm tone of his voice when he said to me, “It’s back.” I didn’t need the name when I felt it in my chest and in the shrill hiss that starts in the back of my ears whenever I’d drew breath. It’s back.

It’s not even the mirrored death we gave each other, the simple acceptance of walking away and back to my room, until midnight comes around. It’s the heavy rise and fall of my shoulders, the slow expand then deflate of my chest, then another heave as I wipe the blood, blood, red from my lip. (Tipped off, spiraled down; we only have fear when we’re facing it.)

Perhaps this is a habit all of us do, to just sit on a chair and stare vacantly at the empty space in front of us, eyes seeing nothing of the same old nothingness of our own rooms and instead going back to the times where things didn’t seem so frozen.

There is life, there is vitality, but perhaps I’ve thought too far away, unbounded hopes free to manipulate my memories into something pleasant, but I know I’m only thinking of the good days. When I hadn’t reached thirteen and everything was all sunshine and happiness, of having to carry no burden at all save for school work – by then (and until now) I don’t see those assignments and projects as heavy loads, I even enjoyed them. It’s formulaic and easy when you know what you’re doing, and I find myself clutching to every handle of security I could see. There’s nothing safer than the same routine, get up and go through schedules prepared for you. By the time my father started deteriorating, it had become an escape.

Flashing images of my own history shatters as I hear a knock on my door, and only when the nurse lets herself in is when I turn to look at her. She brings out her clipboard and taps it. “You’ve got a test scheduled now.” I’ve been dressed for over an hour in the same all-white outfit they expect us to wear, and I follow her out. Despite the old paint peeling in certain areas, the hallways were pure white, and as you walk through it feels like you’ve gone on forever, lost in the blank sea that it’s almost haunting, almost terrifying.

We stop at a door, and she goes in and tells me to wait. “We’ve to wait for another patient.” There’s a padded bench right across from it, against the wall, and I sit on it, not wanting to stand for who knows how long she’ll take inside. There isn’t much difference between the color of my skin and the floor below, but the blue veins trapped under the skin of my wrist is interesting enough that I focus on it. I don’t know of poetry and I have no freckles, but I imagine little dots from where needles have pierced me and make out a constellation from that.