Optical Illusions.
by Leslie Cairns
I sometimes pick until midnight & I think of thin celebrities that are out there, standing in
stilettos but just making me & the internet sad–
& college courses I didn’t take & how I almost was a Philosophy Master’s student, until a
mentor of mine said it was pointless. But then my son wouldn’t exist if I had gone, and there’s something
Deeply meta and abstract about that & then –
&
Then the panic hitches in breaths unkempt, until I barely remember the five vowel sounds.
There was ooh like goldfish mouths
And ah like ah-nah-rex-ia
But I blank on the rest.
Worry that my brain is going–
That I’m dying
My therapist has told me these are all classic signs
Of a pretty ordinary
Panic attack.
& so & so
I pick my face until the secrets settle, until the minutiae of repetitive pinpricks
Soothes me into an upside down
Oblivion.
Now–
Most constellations are not connected at all,
An optical illusion from being so far away
From the marrow of
What made them.
I write after excoriating my face; my brain; my memories
Until the scalding shower feels like midnight shooting stars, brushing by a solemn midnight.
And if it’s dark enough
I still look pretty. What if the constellations were just a bunch of pockmarks
On a body that stretched too big and too wide.
& we all stared at them as if they had answers,
And weren’t the cause of self-inflicted pain?
Most of us looking at the nighttime
Are looking at the Hydra–
The largest constellation. So why does my therapist put her pen down when I say I pick?
The wildest dreams are held together by meltdowns. Our favorite and prettiest dreams lie
When we look at the sky, as if they are nightlights to guide us.
But really, those pretty lights are hollow–
And named after a monster
That regenerates when
It wants to.
&; so I pick my skin until it maws for kindness;
To get to the center of it. I turn myself marked and scarred
The minute I tell myself
I’ve made it through the night.
By the time my skin stops bleeding. The marks fade into welts
The hydra has reborn itself
While lovers have pointed at
Its markings, not knowing they’re pointing at
A monster.
Leslie Cairns is a writer who enjoys writing about mental health. Her favorite published pieces appear in Roi Fainéant Press, as well as Heroin Chic.
"Optical Illusions" is her first appearance in The Itch.
