Sunspots

The way the cotton melts around your skin, an embrace you never had but somehow lost. A comfort perhaps drawn by the strength of childhood imagination, of escapism, of derealization, as the old woman who sits across from you calls it. Her lips curve slowly around this word, as if cherishing the sterility of diagnosis, the beautiful order of labeling the clutter that is you.

The mess started in cars, in fast cars, angry voices. It grew dense in dark rooms with strange men, sad men, in the melancholy satisfaction of a glowing screen with numbers. The numbers grew, the mess grew. Are you even in the room? Are you even listening?

And it is cold, like ice that burns your tongue, that melts down your chest, the chest you bind so tight, when the air comes in again. When the flickering lights above you grow bright again, and the old woman's voice swells with accidental anger. You don't mind anger. Anger is better than most things in life: better than disappointment, better than hope. And anger is damn better than silence. An arm is raised, a wrinkled arm painted in sunspots, a beautifully lived-in arm, and you pull your nails from where they are digging into the soft skin of your thigh.

Sorry.

But were you?

Or did it feel nice to remember simple conflict, early conflict, a scraped knee at the edge of some sunny playground, a cat's claw hooked into your hand? To find comfort there when you shouldn't, when arms raise to stop you, to tell you that you are safe. And you know this woman feels accomplished, helpful, kind. She has put an end to that pain. She will never know how much you needed that pain.