Tale as Old as Time

A short story written in a poetic prose that tackles mental illness and the stigma that keeps people from reaching out for help. Click here for more: https://linktr.ee/fransivanmackenzie_

I. It's like the darkness has come inside my room again, only to put blinders on the chambers of my heart. It's winter underneath my skin and it's only May. I do not remember the last time I felt the sun kiss my cheeks. Everything is the color of my father's cigar smoke now. I do not know what happened. It's as if one night I was okay, singing into the moon on the front porch, and when it's time to sleep, I left the door ajar to welcome the chill home. 

II. I have waited too long for the day when my poetry would be less about death and more about love, when I could write songs with the fluency in the language of a lady's heart like I used to at thirteen with a schoolgirl crush, when I could stay up all night listening to country music instead of ruminating about death. I have been waiting for so long but the waiting never seems to end. Everything I pen now mirrors the contents of my eighth grade journal my English Teacher described as beautifully written. I guess I've always known how to make suffering look good, naming the stars after every glint of every knife in the kitchen. 

III. The nights of my aching pass the same way lilac breeze leaves my summer days. In my mornings, I wake in spite of all the bad dreams and yesterday's leftover tears. I buy overpriced cups of Cappuccino on Seven Eleven and jog a few blocks 'round the city before the dawn settles. Every sunrise I meet, I greet with a beam. Yet at the end of the day, I find myself lonesome.

IV. I buried my phone at the bottom of the hamper. I haven't talked to my best friend in three weeks and six days.

 

V. Dirty dishes clamber their way out of the sink. I tell my brother I am sick and going to the dining room takes Herculean efforts already. He doesn't believe me. My other brother says something about a boy I once drank with. Mom asks when was the last time I went to church. Sometimes, I'm afraid to ask for aspirin and be given a Bible verse. Dad mentions something about kids these days. My sister stays silent. I pray every night with tears in my eyes.

 

VI. I step into the shower and talk myself out of murdering my human body. I do not like what I see in the mirror. I count the tiles more than I scrub my skin. I would eat soap and drink bleach if it meant I could get rid of this inexplicable sadness. I turn the lights off.

 

VII. I feel like a paper dissolving in acid. Like a suicide note yet to be written. There's a voice in my head that says: it's just a matter of time.

 

VIII. I sneak into my sister's room at 3AM when she writes into her diary with floral designs on the pages. She always says she hears the universe better when the city's asleep. I'm the only person in the family she shows her poetry and her faded scars to. When the door creaks like a glitch in my head, she looks up for a second, then pats a spot on her bed.

 

IX. I fold into her skin like an origami. She holds me until the dawn cracks against the sky. She says she will drive me into the facility if I want to. I only speak in sobs this time. I do not understand a thing. But she does. And so she holds me, whispers my name over and over, tell me it's okay, whenever I'm ready. Whenever I'm ready. And it's enough.

 

Reviews

[John Alexander McFadyen]

Ok now you made me sob at the immensity of the sadness the protagonist feels and the compassion and understanding she finds in her sister. Beautifully written again in detail and pathos. I choose " I guess I've always known how to make suffering look good, naming the stars after every glint of every knife in the kitchen." as your outstanding lines!