drabbles

on crumbling

it is 12:35am on saturday, and i am crumbling at the edges.

on friday at 7:25am i sat in front of my teacher who's too intuitive and listened to the scream of static in my ears as she picked apart my use of humour as a deflection and laid the shattered pieces of me neatly on the table, their edges blunt and rough and bloody. she meant well, of course, her words soft and her voice kind and her eyes warm, and she only meant to convey that she understood and was advising me, but all i could feel was laid-out before thousands of unforgiving eyeballs and scraped raw from the suffocating feeling of being in that room. there were no thousands of piercing gazes, in reality, but the weight of my partner-joy-friend's from where she sat next to me weighed just as heavily on my suffocated lungs. the supernova of a human beside me was considerate enough to look down and away, but her presence still ripped at the layers of protection i throw up between myself and the outside world every morning until i am bared to reality with nothing but my shaking fists and bared teeth. i leave the room with an agreement to meet the teacher with my friend again for another oral practice, and my ears burn red-hot like the back of my throat as i retreat with the shards of myself gathered haphazardly in my palm.

on thursday at 11:45pm i laid on my side and stared blankly into the distance, my mind a whirling mess of thoughts and emotions. starbursts of confusion and helplessness and grief scattered across my head like marbles rolling across a wooden floor. i took apart my life, the world, existence itself with fumbling fingers and studied each piece, holding it up to the moonlight so i could watch it fracture the soft glow. what is meaning? what is purpose? i thought and thought and couldn't find an answer amongst the shifting sand obscuring endless pits of pain and darkness, not even when i surrendered to an uneasy sleep.

on wednesday at 1:24pm i was working with two of the highest scorers in the class, one of them my friend-peace-star, and my fingers shook with the desire to help instead of burden. so i took those trembling fingers and typed out something, hoping-wishing-praying it was good enough, and then behind me came a presence and she leaned over to read my answer. she told me it was wrong and why, and i cast out my mask like a crumbling smile so it could hide the shake in my hands. when she left i stared at my answer and saw through it to the stark-white bone of inadequacy it had been born from, and then i ducked my head with those same burning-hot ears to edit it.

i am crumbling at the edges