Calling for Iron By Mason Cashman

Calling for Iron

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It's a wrecking and a reckoning, no rules I have to behave for
               but still their unspoken structures. They're remnants of two halves of a past
               I'm still wrestling to settle.
Every time a hand sits on my throat again, knuckle pressing into that one spot
               I still can never have pressured, by force or forgiveness, I fracture. Again.
And again.      And again.
             It's held my mooring chains through past and present and likely future,
             nearly erogenous in the death-tempting way.             But I fucking hate it.


Directly under my chin, the little crook below my right
               molars where the bone hooks north, a fleshy dimple where
               artery meets ache.       First it was nothing. Then it was a worry spot, a point to
place my finger when I couldn't bite my nails any further than their stubs. In a way it was
grounding,       locating the pulse        to count it, to slow it,                  maybe. 


              Then it was the weakness, warm blood calling for cold steel.
Iron asking for iron at fifteen.
                              Knowing that the space my body occupied wouldn't
hold me in authenticity, a faith I was wanting so badly to answer every question
providing row after row of denial.                    It was a small Gerber multitool,
               scissors-based with three more blades and then some; a gift. 


I had every intention to go through with it, alone in my room some weeknight in the middle
              of sophomore year, my parents asleep just one wall away.     Silver steel pressed
into that soft corner, wet from asking for something to be different, for
              a God who made me in perfect image to let me be in a far simpler way. And then
the blade was gone.    On the floor, somehow,              and then I was too, on my knees muttering
              some kind of thanks for being spared.


Then I couldn't touch it. But a year later
the belt dug into that small pit of flesh and bone and blood and fear.              Fear for what?
Maybe of cleaving myself in half          to fit these two sides of a life I learned
               could not be made whole.
Then his hand pressed there too, the last point of feeling before the fire.


It's flame has burnt out, but the embers are still there. I still flinch, even when it's
              not my hand.                     A soft stroke of a man's fingers over that vulnerable link between
              body and mind, flesh and feeling.          To hold my head up to meet his eyes, to recognize
the burning in us both to breathe     life into this moment, to let go together.
               If I've been able to bring it up before, I usually just tell him to not push under my jaw.
               If I haven't, the eyes have it. Shake my head no, lean away, bring my hand to his wrist.
                             And this man, whoever, will     care, will listen. 


                Thomas told me often he wanted to desensitize it, to make my body his 
to use as he saw fit.     
His pleasure taking priority.                     It never worked.
I'd close my eyes to run but the fire always filled the dark. So he'd try             again     and again, and
               I let him,
didn't want to run away from the one who'd let me build so much for fear of losing it all,
                              terrified of crumbling the most stable foundation I'd known.


Then it was a different blade, a different bedroom, a different continent, and
I tried again.     Over a long distance call from six hours behind, Thomas talked me down. I walked
              the length of the park at sunrise, fog-bound      grass sliding past my ankles as
I wandered the bank of the Ilm, watching the older gentleman who lived down the street
standing hip-deep in the curling eddies to flick his line to     the trout, knowing he knew nothing
               of me. Of any version of me, all three sides     still cleaved apart,     feverish and frantic to
hold them at arm’s length. And for     what?
                              Fear of the unknown?    of the acknowledgement
                              that I am capable of carrying more than I feel I'm worth?
               But Thomas talked me out of it, a four hour call
in the middle of the night, the only person I could think of to tell. 
               I threw out the knife when I got back to my flat.



I learned to leave him in coming months, saw the weight of the blade      in his palm, too.


It's been four years since I last tried.
Eight years of therapy.               Two years of being one person.
               I haven't wanted to since.         But I still avoid
that corner, the halfway between head and heart, concealing the lifeline,
inches from the lips that speak myself into existence.

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Mason Cashman uses words and photos to tell true stories - often about nightlife, subcultures, queer identity, and spirituality. He has an MFA in Nonfiction Creative Writing from the University of New Hampshire, where he was Editor-in-Chief of Barnstorm Journal. His work can be found in Corporeal, Across The Margin, Bullshit Lit, The Hopper, New Feathers, upstreet, and elsewhere. Voluntary digital footprint: @MasonMCashman.