Infection control

Oh my... The number one method of infection control in hospitals is... Hand-washing. The OCD kind. The treat-everything-as-if-it-is-potentially-infectious kind. The oh-wait-I-just-scrubbed-my-skin-off kind.
But apparently nurses get to stab babies! I did a stabbing-babies dance when I found that out. I get to stab them in the foot. Yay!

Ferret

I'm really glad you've come to the conclusion I'm hateful. It's refreshing. I am, sometimes. I am human. I fuck up, and I try my best to mend what I can and not make the same mistakes twice.
But you are lying to everyone. Playing with people. A game with no consequence because nobody can hurt a mirage. And, as it would seem, nobody can touch it either.
Whatever. Enjoy your game. Maybe you'll tell them the truth one day, maybe not. But I'd like you to leave me be.

This, too...

There's something wrong. There's something wrong in my bones and under my skin and it's jangling around in there, screaming at me. I have to get it out. I have to get it out of me.
Hold my breath and panic subsides. This is what I know:
The easy option is a slash away. Old habits are so very easy to return to if you want them back. In the looking glass, she beckons. Icy fingers are grasping, reaching, begging for a decent grip on my throat. Clearly, she's found a weak point.
I make her disappear again. I turn away from the mirror.

This, too, will pass.

BOOM!

Inhale. The whole wide Everything rides into my lungs on a cloud of smoke. Hold. Hold. Cough.
Look up and know that it just changed. It all just... changed.
Childlike deity, I am swinging my legs in the playground of the gods. Giggle. Patterns tessellate and change before my eyes. The colours are smiling at me. It's beautifully terrifying, but I refuse to be scared.
Don't be silly; it's always been like this, you just couldn't see until now. But you always knew, right in the back of your head. You always knew it was this simple.
I nod, feeling like a cabbage patch kid.
Look over at Tom's spiky head. He's got his face in the grass. Bong dangles from his limp fingers. Tom the person. Tom the being.
Andrew does chin-ups and roars; floats-hops-jumps-bounds over to me, sitting with my feet dangling off the trampoline. He swims before me, porcelain skin and red hair and blue, blue eyes. Kisses my forehead; cheeks; lips. I touch his face. I can feel him radiating out of that form. Spilling out of the gaps like sunlight because there's too much Happy in him for just one person, or one point in time and it has to, has to, has to get out.
If I had words, I'd say you're perfect.

Aftermath. Something's different. Everything's different. Sacred. Golden.
This feels right.

Ocean

Cool water. Waves lapping on the shore and the sea in my hair. I stay in the shallows, comfort fringed with panic. An old fear that something huge will come up from the deep and take me down. Recurring dreams of swimming out and out and out, of drifting into the desolate nowhere. The fear of being alone. Without anchor.
But it's nothing. Fear is a product of my mind, and fear itself is very rarely dangerous.
I step out into the water; lift my feet; float. I am driftwood, and I'll go where you take me.
I can still taste salt on my skin.

Barnacle

Barnacle, you are attached, and for all the good it may have done you in the past, you'll get no goodness here. This ship has places to sail and can't float with your weight on her hull. You'll not leave me 'till I scrape you from my skin. You'll not leave me 'till I throw you to the sea.
Eskimo, you've had this igloo far too long. These chunks of hard-packed snow need to be water again; need to be free. I'm going to leave you now, so leave me be.
Mother, you gave me life. I'm thankful, but the fact that you gave it to me means it is no longer yours. The tightness with which you grip dictates that this will not be easy, and so I score along the lines separating you from me, and I cut us apart.

In case there's any confusion...
Angel, this isn't about you. We've already sorted our shit out, and I'm glad of it. :)

It has been a draining week. A cunt of a week.
When it comes to irritation, annoyance, pain, and malingering things in general, one plus one always seems to equal four.
Still, life goes on. Good and bad are quality judgements. It was a week. Not even that. A few days.
Onward.

We used to be so close. Now we seem to bring each other down. Maybe it's time for a break?
I'll see you round, old friend.

It rained last night. This morning. Same thing.
The world is a slick-grey-damp thing; warm and wet and vulnerable. Early birds and scuttling things call out, cutting the distant car-hum straight through. The scent of wet eucalypt pervades. Morning's chill lingers.
(Then the rain came, and we were clean)

Certainty

Strange days. The cigarette-butt-end of Summer. I walk from the silk and barbed-wire web I have woven for myself. Away from an unexpected jarring. The day's heat still shimmers up from the bitumen. Comes up through the soles of my feet into ankles, calves, thighs, hips, torso, chest, self. Tread a well-worn path, to a place I've not been in some time.
Smoke spirals, as dustmotes, on slanting shafts of light. Skip and hop and scamper over rocks like they lead somewhere I have to go. Insects click-crack-hum on the breeze. Sometimes I think they're saying something of monumental importance, but I guess it hardly matters if I can't understand them. So I sit and breathe and make my own meaning. Fumble in the dark and try to interpret some sanity from what I perceive. This is my truth.
I think she thinks I'm going crazy. Breaking up bit by bit, like all the wires and strings and shoelaces holding me together are slowly wearing through. I hold her at arms length and fail to tell the truth. Her doubt hurts a little more than I like. I guess I put more store in her opinions than I thought?
Gigantic pink hibiscus witness everything. They bloom lush petals and blood-and-guts stamens over the fence as I watch them from my windowsill. In the balmy afternoon, I close my eyes and imagine the sea. Ebbing, pulsing thing. I think I need to be there.

C.........

There is nothing so conducive to the yelling of CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNT as high school.
But I stomp my feet further into the ground in the hope that they'll stay there. Look away every time my eyes meet the shimmering blue so I don't get drawn in. I refuse to drift away this time.
I imagine it will be easier after a while. Autopilot will kick in once I get the gears turning right, and so I do. I am going where I want to be. I am getting out of here.

Rebirth

Late afternoon; strange calm. The air is warm and clingy and in this slanting, honey-gold light, eucalypt takes on a richer tone as it clashes against the blue. The air feels almost like rain soon, but no clouds mar the flawless forget-me-not sky. I am back where I need to be for the moment. I am back in the frying pan.
It's been a strange week. In some ways, a fitting end to the summer; throwing plates and breaking more than china. Still, hearts mend like bones if you let them, and we walk on through the craziness we've made and come out okay, if a little changed. We live with the choices we make.
We live.