suture

First the cut. Like a deep, crimson wound, just shallow enough to be non-life threatening, and just deep enough to be painless. With shock, there is no pain. Blood, yes. Pain, no. An irregular wound, a laceration, caused by blunt force trauma to soft tissue lying over hard. A tearing of skin over bone. Scalp over skull as one example. Psyche over soul as another. This is your immortal grief.

A wound might be fixed in the ER by some adept resident doctor. Practising her bedside manner. Exercising her efficiency. Stitch, stitch, stitching your mangled flesh, curved needle flashing in and out of skin. Black thread cinching tight. The other wound is repaired by an aged psychiatrist. Applying his expertise, working out his wit. Talk, talk, talking in your ear. Sensible words diving past the drum, swimming through the subconscious. This is your supposed fix.

Gone, those days of carefree walks through untroubled scenery, those untouched minds, those happily idle hands. Eyes taking in the words of others for want rather than need. Fingers caressing new textures with minds exploring new chemicals. Toes pressing into new sand. Lips kissing new lips.

“Gone,” the doctor says. “Those days are gone.” And he absently runs his gnarled fingers through his great, white beard. “Why man's endless fascination with the past? Because it's the one thing he can never have back. And why his obsession with the future? Because he knows it's where he will spend the rest of his life.”

But you've heard this somewhere before, and paying to hear it from some old man in a tweed coat doesn't make it any easier to accept. Exactly fifty-five minutes and one hundred-seventy dollars later, your feet are carrying you swiftly down the carpeted hall, shoes shushing along a well-worn path. Mind ransacked, you feel as violated as if someone had kicked down the door of your flat and tossed your shit all over.

Your finger hits the cracked elevator button, and the dented stainless steel doors promptly grind open with an accompanying ding. Main floor. You'll get off at the main floor. After a swift ride down with your stomach in your throat, with your eyes studying your shoes, you'll walk. Through the lobby, and outside, squinting. Across the parking lot, and on.

You don't know where you're going, but it certainly isn't back there. You'll fix your god damned self.