pain

How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb

Artwork by Julia Katz

1. Wash the face first, rid it of it’s anecdotes of the day.
Wipe it, leave the memories on the kerchief and look away into the glitter riddling in the abyss because your feet are right next to mine and i know that because I can experience your toes curling inwards with a comfort it’s felt in the distance and glitter has always appealed to you more than the freckles on the redhead in grade five who told you that he misses his dad and that you’re eccentric in the simplest of your ways but your head, darling, was never here.
You were never here.

2. Unbutton your shirt.
It’s been a long kind of day where you’ve been “just tired” like every day for the past 4 years and you knew you were sweating because there were so many people you had to face, maybe just two but there was a tension crawling up your spine so much so you broke the glass in your hand and your drink splattered on the ground but you didn’t mind that, you COULDN’T mind that since you’ve always loved the way your acrylics do the jazz when they mix in water because they’re dissolving, they’re losing control and it’s rather home – like for you to see the two elements entwining to create something they don’t even know of; they’re going to be art.
They’re already so beautiful, you wonder how you build something so ground breaking and not know it.
You don’t know it yet.
And it’s okay.

3. Untie your laces.
You’ve walked a lot today. Tomorrow morning will come bearing the realisation that you’ve walked miles in someone else’s shoes because there are so many conflicts within you, it gets tougher by the hour to know who you are each day.
Oh, creation, you’re so many lives, so many instances, so many roads and you’ve managed to walk on yet another today. You’re proud of you.
So rest your feet, let their mischief be.

4. Mess up your hair.
The head has been working since the first blink of the eye after the blanket was too warm for you to sleep now and it refused to cease as adamantly as your mother stood in the glory of the things that constituted her being, the ones she was being asked to “change.”
It didn’t give up on you. The machines have been slowing and rusting and squeaking and lagging but they’re running — they’re running because they’re being fed and protected and oiled and pushed and they are yet to tire.
You are exhausted, but you’re not exhaustive.
You’re a chaos theory and the blunder is generally you.

5. Do not think about your last kiss being the last because you so blindly believed that there are going to be more like these in the corner of staircases and balconies and the right hand numb, you shall explode. Do not think about the last person you took shelter in, it’s you you were reaching out to and you who took the face of another — oh, as inviting as you don’t think you’ll ever be.

6. Do not think about your broken home.
Or the backs that turned when your arms were as empty as you never would’ve let them be, you’re crazy and you’re nuts.
But you’re your own.

7. After you’re through taking things off and washing things away,
Rest your armour.
Rest your heart.
Rest your limbs.

You’re an explosive,
So dangerous but so alive.

—

Written by Vitti Joshi

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