By: May Crain

Time is a peculiarity, a dungeon, an acquaintance, its strange captivity at once generous and ungratefully distant. It passes through long winding roads, each road more altered than the last one. Will the following road be gravelly, shrouded by evergreens, or will it be cemented in concrete with wheatfields blowing softly in the breeze? Time drifts past just as the swans do, swimming idly by, crossing lakes that sparkle like crystals in the sunlight. In life, people meet for a certain period, learning from one another, changing each other, making rifts in the universe before moving onto the next part of life, the next winding road of time.

I feel time drift through me in moments like these. My boyfriend and I are in bed together, our lips entwined like two threads in a tapestry. His fingers pry apart the petals of my rose as our breaths mingle. I am so overwhelmed with pleasure that I could kneel before his feet and consume him as one would consume a fruit, and he is too. His spear is alert, sticking up like an arrow beneath dark tufts of hair. I can recall the other day when he sat on me. In that instant, I felt like I was using my mouth for the first time. I specifically requested it because I did not want him to see me, and afterwards, the thought replayed in my head, cutting me so deeply that my eyes bled saltwater. When he asked me what was wrong, I stupidly said, “It just tasted gross.” We got into an argument after that.

Sometimes I feel like I’m on a roller coaster with no clear path of where it is going. I tried to make sense of my emotions in the past, but could never figure out which one would surface at any given moment. They were little bugs in their dens, and I could never guess which bug would come loose. Would it be an angry fire ant, or an innocent little ladybug? Sometimes they hit me like whiplash: a building wave, a judgment, a warning, my mind a burst of sensitivity. I could try to rein it in, but I would be a soda bottle fizzing until my inevitable eruption. Then my words would cut deep as knives, slashing at the feelings of those around me, and the battlefield would be filled with ravaged corpses. In the aftermath, my emotions would migrate south for the winter, and after coming down from the adrenaline high, my body worn; a dog collapsed on the lawn after a long run, I would contemplate how completely and utterly alone I was, even when surrounded with familiar faces. When I looked in the mirror I saw a broken, damaged thing staring back at me, its eyes swollen and glossy, its face beet red and scrunched up like tissue paper. At the sight of it my tears would fall in quick succession, my body doubling over, about to vomit. I wished so desperately someone could glue my broken pieces together, but I only had myself. So I slept in the shadows of night, waiting until I was ready to face the sunlight. I could try and glue my broken pieces together myself, but it would no longer be pretty, only crumbled glass.

Time drifts through me, and it’s summertime again. I’m sitting with my boyfriend on the couch when I receive a call. He is angry, veins bulging in his neck, eyes flashing. His palm in the air stops me immediately. Sometimes I hate the way he can so easily control me. His low and quiet tone is soaked with power, echoing, moving between mountains, oceans, skies. He apologizes, and it’s over. With just those simple words. Over. He is so hot tempered, so disagreeable, so appalling, and yet I feel so drawn to him. Others see me as combative, surly, but with him I become a bug to be crushed, a piece of dirt on his shoe. He pulls away. My cheeks feel empty without his touch, leaving stinging pains in their wake. Sometimes I like how he makes me feel like nothing. Invisibility can be cathartic. But there is still a part of me that knows he is cruel. I tell myself that although he is savage, behind his brutality there is tenderness. Even so, the truth is there in bright colors, and his bitterness wakes the thought that perhaps he does not even like me. I know his behavior was learned by his father. That excuses him, doesn’t it? But still, it does not feel good in the moment. The thought that he could have a troubled home life never crossed my mind in the past, but it is the truth, which is why I have always been so drawn to him. When I envision a boy with blond hair and blue eyes, I envision a happy, permissive family, a stereotype that was ingrained into my brain in youth. In reality, he is like me: broken, with so much anger inside him.

Time passes, and it is autumn. The air is cool and crisp and smells like evergreens, a strong, piney scent. The trees are a bright, cheerful orange. Crunchy brown leaves cover the grass and concrete like a blanket. The sky is a gray ceiling above the colorful, yet terrifying world. My boyfriend is disgusted with me again, and I feel a rage boiling my insides and turning my kidneys into a stew. He is spewing misogyny, and I sigh at his evident chauvinism. His fragile masculinity is prevalent in the way he speaks, walks, breathes. The feminist in me despises it, but the insecure part of me revels in it. It is two sides on the same coin, both with opposing viewpoints.

He reminds me of my father. The trailer I grew up in was a minute and decrepit thing. My father’s beer bottles were scattered across the floor, and the strong fetor of smoke wafted in the air, further hinting at his deep-seated addiction. Mildew crept in the corners, a growing disease, and the cobwebs on the ceiling crawled with twitching black spiders. A clock ticked in the corner, the only sign that this dying home was alive, but other than that: nothing. Deafening, suffocating silence. Oftentimes, I would stare out the window into our unruly front lawn, watching the lonely swing push back and forth in the wind. The darkened clouds poured waterfalls into the soaked grass, yet still the swing beckoned to me, inviting me out to play. The building stank of a bacterial odor: sharp, pungent, sulfurous. The acrid stench would force its way into my nostrils, causing the involuntary reaction of vomit erupting in my throat. I swallowed it down greedily, although the meal was never pleasant. It was sour, bitter, acidic, the kind of supper even a hound wouldn’t want to consume. I knew there was some idea of a perfect family, the house unburdened by storms, the grass untouched by frost, the sight of such a tall building so magnificent in its opulence. Next to it, my home would be small and damaged, and inside there would be nothing but perfectly constructed horrors. My father didn’t seem bad, but he was. I could put a bunny and a snake in a cage and assume the snake would do the most harm, but there were times when I could never truly guess the outcome.

My mother died because of him. I didn’t see it myself, but I can imagine her body as it fell. In my head, she is a comet that collides with the Earth, a stroke of lightning, but in my heart it is slower. She is a leaf that sinks into the depths of the sea. The drywall is a canvas painted with her blood that crawls down it like a feral, starved creature.

I turn to look at my disgusted boyfriend. He is a cruel man. His fuel is the very drugs he consumes, the very smoke he inhales, the very alcohol he drinks. On the surface, he is a drunken fool, but beneath this mask is something far more sinister: a darkness, one that can snuff out any light. He is my father in living form.

Time drifts through me again.

Winter. The snow drifts over the foggy dawn, little flecks of white sinking lightly through the mist. I stand unmoving like stagnant water, affixed to my location on the fissured asphalt. The dim light from the surrounding buildings emits a low buzz in the otherwise silent morning, the trees seeming to whisper with the gentle breeze that drifts through them. White, fluffy clouds wander over the horizon, the sun vanishing over its hazy glow, bruising the sky with purple and blue. At the lively, dazzling sight, I dig my teeth into my bottom lip as if trying to chew it off.

“It’s cold,” I say. The words feel strange in my mouth, like they’re not supposed to be there. They slip out of me so rapidly, so intensely, that I hardly feel my voice in my throat. It is as though my mouth is a hand that holds a coin loosely inside it before the coin slips out into the air, falling into the water with a deep, echoing splash. After this splash, there is only the silence, which is so loud it is almost painful, causing intense, searing damage. I look at him with a face that is more red than my hair. His face is blank. Then, suddenly, he is angry, filling the silence with something even more painful, and my heart sinks into my stomach like an anchor, pounding blood into my system until I fill up like a bottle, so full that I could burst. It is like he is changing before my eyes, contorting into something wrong, something evil. My face turns ashen. My heart screams. The world stops before my eyes. The wind that was once pulling the leaves is replaced with stillness. People who were once walking by are no longer there. The clouds in the sky cease to exist. There is only this aching, lonely feeling.

He reminds me of high school. One particular day made me angry: the school parade, the way the prom king and queen sat on the tail of a truck, waving gracefully, surrounded by all their minions marching idly by. The princes were the football players, muscular and beautiful. The princesses were the cheerleaders, not a flaw in sight. The knights were the band geeks, acne on their faces and spit flying from their lips. Then, at the very end of the line, were the circus clowns, the kids who were different. Everyone gawked at them like animals in a zoo, and I, a member of the crowd, knew where I would exist in this. I would be juggling fruits for their pleasure for the rest of my life. It was with a heaving sigh that I took one last look at the marching students and walked deeper into the crowd, to be by myself where I belonged, alone in my queerness and strange abnormalities.

I live in a world surrounded by people who despise me with every fiber of their being, people who would even go as far as crucifying me in some sick, disturbing fashion, but even that death would be too glorious for the likes of me, a death reserved only for the holiest of people. Instead, they would burn me like witches, throw rocks at me like they would demonic creatures, and in the end I’d be left to die, weak and drowning in my own blood.

Time drifts through me for the last time.

Spring. Tiny shards of glass poke at my consciousness, memories painting themselves across my pupils like a projector casting videos onto a screen. In this particular illusion, I am drowning. Colors erupt around me like a volcano: a blur of blue and white. A million hands grab at me with intense ferocity, bubbles levitating toward the dim, flickering light. I scream, but hardly any noise comes out, only a quiet echo, a deep gurgling sound. I can’t see their faces, only their hands, which hold me down, rendering me defenseless. I have no courage. It is easily erasable, an insignificant doodle made with nothing but pencil and paper.

My body vibrates as I sink into my sheets. A familiar figure crawls over me. Golden curls, sapphire eyes, milky complexion. He undulates against me; a dying deer. He kisses my neck, my cheek, my mouth. I am overcome with pleasure for a moment, but then he unhinges his jaw, revealing razor sharp teeth. I force my eyes shut, attempting not to focus on the pain of my nose being gnawed off. My heart thumps erratically, a drum beating against my ribcage.

I awaken, sitting up. My heart races: a thunderous, infuriating melody. I am on a bench outside the college cafeteria, watching people as they walk past, observing their interactions. Beyond the flat spiky grass, a bridge spans a murky pond, leading to a flat of land with bushes. Behind that, a river ripples like tiny crystals. The water, no doubt biting cold, is clear enough to see the rocks beneath its shallow surface from ten feet away. I can almost hear it sing as it tumbles over the rocks. A bigleaf maple towers over me, its huge gnarly roots snaking beneath stiff yellow grass that spreads out under the bench as if reaching for something. I glance to the side, where a dusty wheelbarrow filled with chopped wood sits. Above is a bright blue sky covered with fluffy clouds. Beneath this cerulean sky stand mountains, tall and glorious, capped in snow. I shiver. In the shade, the early autumn breeze feels chilly. The air bears the calming aroma of pine needles and tree sap. It is the perfect time to die.

I glance at my hand. The cut is still there. Picking up my pill bottle, I pour several pills into the palm of my throbbing, bloody hand. Setting it back down, I use two fingers to extract a pill from my palm. In the light of the sun, it looks almost like a pearl. I drop it into my mouth and swallow it. Carefully, I devour another pill, and another, and another, until my palm is empty. Within seconds, the world becomes nothing. Just inky blackness and the slow thump of a heartbeat.

.