Cycles

art by Katherine Shi, words by Cayla Celis

Thread

It doesn’t follow her around nowadays. She doesn’t feel its hot breath on her neck constantly anymore or hear it stomp behind her. She feels lighter now, albeit less grounded now that it’s no longer a constant in her life.

It does sometimes find her.

And when it does find her, it finds her alone. It finds her alone without any heroics left within her. It finds her alone in desolate places, when she’s unable to muster any bravado or strength.

(Why would she? There’s no one to reassure, no one to tell that she's okay, she's alright, she's fine, just fine.)

Today it finds her in a 24-hour laundromat before dawn as she’s waiting for her daughter’s laundry to dry. There's nothing else to do but watch the clothes spin until they stop. For a second she wishes she could just spin and spin and spin until she stops. 

(Why would she?

There’s too much to do—bills, laundry, insurance, night shift, nap, lunch, kids’ lunch—

too many people to take care of—Mama, Papa, kids, him, John in Room 215 with the bad heart—

too little time.)

And right then she knows it’s there when she feels its hot breath on her, feels the subsequent chills that run straight through her. It’s then that she shrinks two feet as her heart bangs on and on against the cage that is her own body.

It first tries to claw at her. She ducks, covers, but she still can’t avoid being pierced as she cowers in the corner. Battling sharp pain, she tries to crawl away to the back of a dryer, but it still catches her, and as it does, it sinks its teeth into her chest.

She hears some of her rib cage break off, feels some of the pieces ricochet and vibrate against her skin like a stick to a drum, as blood spurts out of the newly-formed indents in her body. She tries to catch her breath, but she wonders if there’s anything for her to even catch; is she even still living?

(Is there anything even left of her?)

Then a dryer dings its little jingle. Its light melody flutters through the heavy air around her. She looks up to see the insides of her dryer, where her clothes have stopped spinning to instead settle into a pile at the bottom. Her mind takes a while to process this, to settle, but it does. And when it does, she starts crawling.

With her hand on her chest, she gets up and hopes to god nothing else spills out as she opens and shuts the dryer door. She can’t afford to unravel, to let her life slip past the spaces between the fingers. Her life means too much to others even if it means too little to her.

Blood leaves her palm painted in red as she feels herself fading, her center of gravity shifting. She opens and shuts the dryer door again just to make sure she’s still alive and hears shuffling. When she turns around, it’s nowhere to be seen.

She sighs in exhaustion and just sits for a second, staring at the trapped face staring back at her from the glass. She studies it, looking for anything that could resemble the person she was before.

She finds nothing. There’s nothing that resembles the same hopeful yet focused eyes nor the smile she used to have. 

(Why would she expect anything different? It’s been a year now.)

Then she gets up and picks up all the pieces of her chest, no matter how miniscule, from the floor with her blood-soaked hand. She doesn’t care enough to distinguish between all the shattered bone, all the cartilage, all the muscle. 

(Why would she? The pieces are all of her, and she’s learned before that there’s no point in trying to put herself back together right away if she’s just going to get hurt again and again.)

She shoves them all back in and zips up her jacket so that when there’s someone coming in, she can look cheerful enough, normal enough, just enough.

She keeps her mouth shut when she leaves the laundromat, when she arrives home, and when she gets the chance, she doesn’t tell anyone about it.

(Why would she? He’s gone.)