Demands

She put her arm around my shoulder and said ‘I think you’ll be ok here’. It was the perfect thing to say. The perfect thing to do. But as I looked out the window I couldn’t stop myself missing the garage with the mattress on the floor. The place with the man who drove his motorcycle into a brick wall. Who had a steel plate hammered into his head. You could feel the rivets when you tried to stroke away his anger. Tried to stop him screaming. Such a long time ago. So many places that weren’t really rooms in between. All part of the rivets of flesh on my face. The peaks and troughs of bad days and good days. All history really. Nothing of importance. Still, I am uneasy seeing it in the reflection of the glass and want to move backwards. It will never leave me. Unlike him. These patterns under my fingertips will never really fade with time.

It is unfathomable they say that I find this room so terrifying. That I need someone to walk me through the door. There is nothing here to scare me or keep me awake. I smile. I agree it is wonderful. Behind the smile I miss the terror. There is a beautiful symmetry to living in fear. A point at which your existence is clarified and refined. It is not right to say that. To admit that the normal things are the most demanding. The most terrifying. Eating. Sleeping. Keeping warm. It is hard to know how to do these things when they have never been done before.

The new carpet smell is not a comfort. The weight of my foot in the thick fabric is hard to tolerate. I walk gingerly. Not often. I tiptoe around this new place with the lights off. Stretch out my toes to reach the islands of floor that are not covered in fabric. This feeling on my skin is as unknown to me as walking barefoot on the beach. It is too pleasing. It starts me twitching. The nods and noises of paranoia that have kept me company. I worry that I will get lost here. Being nothing in particular. Having no place else to go. I tell myself it is only a pause. A motorcycle stopping not crashing. A quiet room. A window to look out of. An empty wall upon which to write the new story. She has started it for me. With her kindness and careful words. And so when I shut the front door and am all alone I know how to thank her. I put the blue necklace with the dead butterfly in a metal box under the bed. And I fall asleep without dreaming.