It’s a story in kind of poem form but I figured I might as well share because sure.
I once knew a boy who all teeth. All hard and mad and ongoing, when I met him we were both wearing blue hospital gowns. He had a scar running from the bottom of his wrist to his elbow crease, I had black charcoal lining my stomach and prescription painkillers in my veins. He says he was born with teeth. That he came into this world fighting with fists raised high saying “this is who I am don’t you forget I am the reason that hurricanes are named after people”. The first thing he did the day we were released from the psych ward was smoke a cigarette, and cry as hard as he could make himself, and hold onto me like I was the last thing holding him up when I wanted so much to be doing the exact same thing. The last time he slept over I realized he even looks tired in his sleep. This boy, all wind; angry and quiet and powerful. he never stopped fighting. he has mental illness lined up like pebbles in his palm but he fell asleep with me. His head a gentle weight on my chest. When he woke up, surrounded by me and my soft, he said that in that moment he didn’t feel like he needed to fight so hard anymore. A few weeks past and I could see him breaking apart; crumbling through my fingers. He called me most days and described all the parts of himself that were hurting. How his dad hit him again; how he found a crack pipe in his mother’s sock drawer; how he wanted to rip himself apart, break every bone against a cement wall; how he wanted this to be over. He told me everything that he’d been quiet about, so I made him promise that if he stayed alive so would I and if he died I would follow right behind him. He said “I’m the wind. I’m just blowing through but I will stay for as long as I can and hold your chin in my palm”. Another month past and he became something too close to gone. His bed became locked cell; it became the ribcage to his bloody and atrophied heart, so I became clean blood. I brought him food and medication. One night he called me over, that was the day I learned how to stitch a wound closed with a sewing needle and embroidery thread. He used to say that there was no hero in his scars. I would tell him that damn fucking right there was. His body was a battlefield; he broke himself over his own knee every day and always came back for more. He fought, ripping, tooth and nail every hour of the day and I still don’t know if I was saying that only to him or also to myself. I once knew a boy, all quiet and hurt, and soft like the shell of a ladybug. He was named after a hurricane and he fought from the moment he came into this world. He was the wind, just blowing through, and one day during the summer, he stopped fighting.
This piece has some of the best imagery I’ve seen in such a long time. You are an incredible writer💓