lucidity

As a child, I’d scrutinise intently any mark of a discoloured hue that might appear on my skin. Bruises, stains - anything that lingered on the surface of a palm or the upper layers of a knee. I could get lost in the minutes spent staring at particularly prominent veins, tracking down my arms in flowing and lengthy clusters. My build made my wrists appear elongated and thin, thus occasionally caesious vessels were shown starkly. Today, they are present in a shade of green under the yellowed bathroom light. The illumination of these parts always displayed them in a way which seemed too alarmingly inconsistent; such unsettling variation. Each functioning aspect of my body fit together quite as it should; not unlike cogs ticking in perfect synchronisation behind the face of clockwork -only sometimes, it seemed the parallels were too similar. I’d forget, easily, that I belonged to the world as human. Though, I never did decide on what the term ‘human’ meant most to me.