a chair study
- BLOTCHED.STUDIO
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
do you believe in angels? if they exist i doubt they shimmer. i’m starting to think they’re the ones with heart strings torn to threads. in hospitals, half-lit rooms, halos like light bulbs burnt out. there’s a full moon in gemini tonight. she keeps tugging at my shirt sleeves, telling me to write toward the people i love and the ones i’ll never meet at all. humans scattered across mismatched zones, each of us trying breathe inside a system that trades our attention for quick hits of nothing. there are memories hidden away. places i sat silent. places i wish i didn’t.
sprouts that push through sidewalk cracks. surviving without permission. the butterfly-winged stomach crush. hopeful humans.
“do you want to play uno?,” my roommate said. a soulmate-godsend-stranger with tattooed constellations down her arms and eyes that cut like shards of glass. “you remind me of someone. from a story i read and forgot until now.” she watched the sky while she spoke. as if the clouds spoke too. “Out of My Mind, ever heard of it?” about a girl who learns to speak through a machine. who writes her own life into existence when nobody is listening. i can’t remember the plot, but i remember the feeling of first aches. how easy it is for the world to misinterpret someone who breaks in ways that are inconvenient. “humanize mental illness,” she wrote as a prayer in disguise on the chalkboard wall next to the cafeteria window, letters smudged from her sleeve.
between the rounds, she sat beside me and whispered. “spit your meds.” the words cracked the fluorescent air. a slit of light in a padlocked corridor. after days on zyprexa, i couldn’t lift my limbs without feeling underwater. they look under your tongue in these places, i thought. something about how my body wasn't fully mine. sleep became a god i didn’t believe in but surrendered to anyway. when i woke again, she was packing her things: two pairs of socks, sneakers stripped of laces, paper cranes with bent wings. vienna had been on hold for thirty four days. limbo. her freedom felt like something i could almost touch. i walked her to the end of the hallway. she walked it like a bridge. hugged me with a sense of longing. of “i’ll miss you”, and “get better." she told me where to find her. we kept in touch for a little while. and then, nothing.
I believe in them because i’ve met them. the angels. shifting forms like clouds, returning to whatever sky they fell from. they don’t arrive polished or hand you answers. they tell you the truth when you can barely hold your head up. there need to be more conversations about the tenderness required to keep on living. nobody teaches us how to come back to ourselves. we learn from strangers with a strong sense of soft. moons that tug at our ribcage. i’m still learning how to be here. to trust that good things stay. i've built this platform as a space to share my voice. hoping others find it who need to- and as an offering, share their's as well. who knows, maybe we’ve been carrying the same stories in different bodies. in fragmented shadows falling beneath words.
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