wood

They sit across from me, quiet, waiting for me to speak up. I say nothing, but my heart is pounding inside. Something is eating me alive; I can’t tell if it’s gnawing its way to my brain or if it’ll stay put inside my stomach. Either way, I close my eyes. I don’t know if I can handle everything being thrown at me right now. 

Yes, I can see their mouths moving but I can’t quite piece together what’s coming out. The waves fall upon my deaf ears, lapping against the curve of my skull but not daring to enter. I block them out. They can’t come in. I won’t let them. 

My fingers trace over the deep scars etched into the wood and I feel the steel cut into my skin. It’s not happening right now, but I can feel it. The cold, grating, dancing lines tracing like my fingers on the wood. Tracing and dancing ribbons all the way up my arm, and their eyes train onto me, sharper than before. Sharper than the knives I use, enough to cut me without any words. 

So I crack open, just like the veins inside me, just like the ones etched into the wood. I cave and the wood consumes me and I am submerged in every single cut, every single crack, every single little line in the wood I know so well. 

One cut for the late nights kneeling outside, wishing the sky would eat me whole. The stars taunt me when I look up and I am motionless, breathless. Waiting, wishing, wanting it all to be over. A cut enough to remind me of the cold concrete against my knobby, child knees. A cut whistling like the whipping wind that slapped my hair against my face in the dead midnight. No one heard. No one saw. Almost like it never happened at all. But I can still hear the silent footsteps ringing against the hardwood and I remember. 

I remember this crack, mirrored with subtlety in the closet door. Their voices crash over me and I know it’s not me this time, it’s not about me, it doesn’t concern me. But I want it to stop, I want it to be over, please make it end. So I tiptoe outside and I hear the resounding pound of knuckle against wood. So I tiptoe back inside my bed and ignore the wet on my pillow. My chest heaves but I ignore it. My head pounds too but I ignore it. My blanket swallows me and I suffocate. 

I suffocate on the wooden spoon digging into my throat and I feel the bile rise. The spoon slits my tongue and renders me speechless as I watch the book approach me in slow motion. This time, I fall on the hardwood and beg on those knobby, child knees. I beg for forgiveness, I beg God for mercy, I beg the walls to wrap me. But this time, the backpack is flying toward me and I don’t have time to react. 

I react to the stain on the tiny corner of the table. I know that stain because it was me. I did it. It’s impossible to forget. I heard about it for days and days and days. One mistake and it cost me so many days of freedom. So many days staring at the godforsaken wood, wishing it would just break in half and disappear. Disappear into thin air like I wish I could. 

They sit across from me and their mouths suddenly start to make sense. Through the fog, I can see myself spinning out of control. Remembering was a little too much and my heart is breaking, cracking like the wood in front of me. 

So why do I try so hard to remember? Why will I never be able to forget? I can still hear it now, feel it now, see it now in my mind’s eye. 

This is the wood I am carved from. This is the wood that built me. And even though its splinters sting, it will forever be home.