ACUPUNCTURE, IRIDESCENCE
I speak aloud to distract my brain from itself. I make coffee with cream to examine the physics of decay. I see myself in the inevitable, in all things that fade and die. The internet tells me that my headache is a sign of a tumor, that my lack of serenity is indicative of some chemical discrepancy. I can’t dissect the differences in their models of pain, their diagrams of decomposition. Expiration is all the same. Extinction is universal. The internet tells me to take walks for increased resilience. Survival of the fittest. I am blinded by the sun’s approval. I am silenced by the joy of nature. I scrub toothpaste into my molars just to analyze the potential range of satisfaction derived from murdering him or myself, which elimination would yield the greatest certainty of liberation. The internet tells me to seek professional intervention, a hotline offered through a forum, a forum supplied through catalogs, catalogs sifted from like-minded inquiries, a network of self-help. But I achieve balance in the unclaimed and the innately accepted. I anchor my knowledge in the vacuities of assumptions and absolutes. I am a battle of falsities and truths. I investigate my refrigerator as I deconstruct our failures. I assign blame over a salami sandwich. I eat standing up, radioactive, volatile, every meal unworthy of dinner tables or woven placemats, each sip is from a carton, all my plastic cups are buried under porcelain. The internet claims that mindfulness is a subtle yet self-sufficient counteraction to rumination, so every morning I pour tropical energy drinks into glass flutes and watch the aerated substances engorge with fizz, a carbonated blue raspberry today, its cerulean clarity ravaged. I am a dainty woman in my belligerent pursuit of longevity. I am a peace lily, with roots infiltrated by rot. I pretend to sip wine. The suncatcher suspended in my kitchenette refracts with ethereal brilliance, scintillates off a crockery pile-up in the metal sink, shimmers against granite like polychromatic holograms. I clean the dishes instead of shattering them against my skull, intrusive thoughts must be neutralized. I watch soap suds cluster over surface tension like crystalline honeycombs, encircling my wrists with the sentience of amoeba. I observe the chromatic convex of a single wandering bubble. It may not always work, mindfulness, the internet confesses, and that’s okay; one must possess a varying assortment of distractions, of tricks, like a magician to his sleeve or a fairy to her wand. I encase myself in a vesicle of hypnosis. I inhale the oxygen of nameless concertos. I fragrance foreign melodies with lavender incense, bergamot candles, eucalyptus air fresheners. I hydrate floating marantas from bronze and silver watering cans, mist leaves that are emerald-green, their veins cut like antlers. I restore ecological equilibrium in the disposal of three caladiums and two jade succulents. I resist hibernation to the expletives of lawless children. The internet tells me to embrace new hobbies in the face of apathy, so I sit bare-legged against unswept mahogany, impotent at the mouth of a Parisian balcony, attempting to render reality with paint like the Dutch. My life is strewn about hardwood. Shadows deepen against my negligence, I am talentless. I photosynthesize until I am bound to incompetence by golden flesh. A dying sun splinters through my houseplants, rusting their foliage, x-raying a stray vial of perfume bright yellow, blood orange, violent like citrine. Every vinyl suffers the grand finale of silence, all wicks must disintegrate. I retreat into a casket of steam-caressed water and wallow until my skin cells are incinerated, until I have fused molecularly with pain. I molt within a sauna of flame-pricked darkness, rose-freckled hydrotherapy. The internet cautions the use of cell phones before bed, something about blue-light exposure or circadian disruption, but I prefer to be organically seduced. I fertilize my sleep addiction with camomile tea. I cradle the aureate substance in floral earthenware as though I am royal in my quest to be euthanized. I overdose on melatonin. I lie still, my consciousness affixed to the spiraling reigns of a ceiling fan, preying on the downfall of my neighbors because they are nocturnal, their voices haloed by autonomy, their indecencies fortified with drywall. But I am inert. I cannot react. I cannot be probed. I have pacified the biology of my brain in its aspiration to eradicate me. I am like quartz under the moon: jagged, docile, harmless. I am like amethyst, stoic and divine, waiting to be vandalized by the sun.
Faith Allyse, 21, Houston, Texas - USA ✯ IG: @faithallyse
“Faith possesses an unprecedented appreciation for dogs that sunbathe and cats that loaf. This is the only short story she will ever write about heartbreak. She loves a good comma splice; a few semicolons never hurt anyone. She's probably visiting the cinema for the hundredth time this week.”