Self-sick By Eirene Gentle

Henry Söderlund CC




Self-sick
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My heart is pulpy. It slithers half-chewed inside me. 

“I like bikes,” the neighbour’s kid says, as if preference means something. She talks to me though I don’t encourage it and the air is soupy, spoony, air you eat though you don’t want to. Yesterday was orange from wildfire a million miles away but today is just pulpy. Like my heart but outside, and everywhere. Humid, like it has pockets. 

Have you ever ridden a bike into a lake? It’s not difficult, you just keep going. The bike feels grass and gravel but doesn’t know what to do with water. We’re like that, feeling until we don’t know what to feel. But I don’t tell the girl this. She likes bikes. That’s enough. No reason to drown, not even in air. 

Did you know, I’ve been consuming air for quite some time. They call it grief but it’s just repetition. Have you ever eaten so much you can’t eat any more, only you can, you do, you keep eating because you have no stop button or filter. No ‘that’s enough.’ Have you ever stopped eating so much you rattle when you walk and all you think of is food? Do you know that for other people ‘some’ is an option? 

“Look at me,” the kid yells, as if I were her mother. Scooting (illegally) along the sidewalk, “no hands!” If she flies over the handlebars she’ll probably need stitches. She’ll bleed quite a lot, someone will clean it from the sidewalk so it won’t scare other kids. Years later someone will trace the scar with a finger. “What’s this from,” they’ll ask and she’ll make up a lie less pathetic than truth. 

The deluded self weighs more than earth and is not poetic while I’m built from poetry when I’m not leaking air. All that swallowing swells me up. I could prick myself with the poetry until I fizzle out or send it up to the sky like so many balloons. Maybe some far-off nation will think they’re drones, or bombs. They’ll deploy all their resources, like that ‘80s song.* Everyone itches for opportunity to explode. War, like grief is repetition. Grief, like war, always comes back. 

​‘No hands,” the girl yells and throws herself down beside me. Even if I pretend not to see her, she won’t go away. I want to tell her it’s dangerous to ride with no hands or ask if she’s ridden her bike into a lake. I want her to know a better neighbour than me. The world is so fucking disappointing. You can’t spend your whole life yelling ‘watching out for manholes and monsters.’ But you have to. That’s what I don’t say. You have to.

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*99 luftballons, or 99 red balloons, English version 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpu5a0Bl8eY
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiwgOWo7mDc

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Eirene Gentle writes, mostly little, usually from Toronto, Canada.