Autobiography of an Open Wound
A memoir by Savannah Massey
i. I think there is cotton in my ears and I'm not sure how it got there. Everyone and thing around me is muffled with white fuzz and I can only tell you’re saying are you okay? five times over because your mouth is drawing out each syllable. Suddenly, your lips are an artist and each ask is its own masterpiece. My hand is on fire and some of it is on the asphalt. The gash is carved deep down my thumb and kept company by splotches of red. Fuck Jackson Pollock and whatever the hell he and these rocks just painted on my palm. Fuck Michelangelo and what he just carved into my skin. I prefer my art in front of me and mumbling questions. ii. You’re asking me if it hurts, iii. My eyes always start burning when they’ve been open for too long. But each time I close them, I’m seven and connected to Momma and Georgia at the knuckles at the Jackson zoo. The air is holding the smell of animals and pollen and Mississippi in thick curtains around us. Each time, I am begging for home. i. Maybe that cotton is in my head because, god, I can’t think straight. I can see each tuft sitting between neurons like birds on a powerline—even though the world is spinning and telling me to stay down. And I’m listening—laying down like it’s December; arms and legs out like the pebbles and parking lot grime are snow and I’m determined to make an angel. But the asphalt is hot to the touch even though the sun retired a while ago and all of me is touching all of it. It’s a great reminder that September is hosted by a humid eighty degrees that isn’t quite like the turn of winter. ii. and it does— iii. Georgia and I are gawking at the spider lilies spotting the hell strips putting distance between us and concrete attempts at extravagant enclosures when the asphalt pulls me down. Each rock rips at the freckles on my knees and feels jagged against my skin. I’m crying big, first-grader tears and begging Momma to take me home. It’s the last day before our summer pass expires. She says we’re not leaving until we see everything, that we have to get our money’s worth. i. But now, you’re wrapping cotton gauze around my thumb, index, ring finger and wrist then doing it again. Short brown hair is cascading down past your ears as you're leaning over me. You’re covering all the red so carefully: like the final touches on an art project, like I’m your art project. You’re holding me tight and pressed between your chin and forearms, like it’s all you’ve ever wanted and you just found a good enough excuse. ii. all my memories of you being here do. iii. My knee is raw and an ugly red. No one is asking if I am okay, only to get up and keep going.