Ill With Similes

Both Colorful And Terrifying

My face felt stiff and dry, as if I was wearing thin mask of tearstains.

I stretched, pushing myself from the body on my bed. My hands wandered to my cheeks, scrubbing at the coating, and encircling my eyes.

The darkness surrounded me like a cloth, and I found myself intrigued by it. I waved my arms about, following the shadows with my pupils, not yet adjusted to my sudden waking.

I could have easily fallen back in to sleep, the temperature being cool, but not miserably cool, and Jamie's figure was comforting, but I enjoyed the white noise of the hot water heater and the insects outside.

So I attempted to arise from the bed.

I failed, landing on the rug with an oof, moaning in a mixture of both humor and pain. I pressed a fist to my lips, hoping that I had not woken Jamie. I laid on my back for a moment, allowing the cool of the floor to seep through my white tee-shirt and black jeans.

"Hmm?" He stirred.

I realized my mistake soon enough, and scrambled back on the bed, to his side.

"Jamie. Jamie. Go back to sleep, shh," I said quietly, breaking the serenity of the night.

"Are-Are you okay?" He sat up, pulling the comforter around both of us.

"Yeah," I confirmed, watching the quilted pattern slide off of my stomach. "I just woke you up, probably. I fell off the bed."

"You fell off the bed?" Jamie exclaimed, to which I nodded in agreement. "You absolute nerd." We shared a laugh. "Do you want to go back to sleep, or?"

"Nah, Do you?" I reached to my nightstand with a bandaged arm, and switched on a lamp.

"Nah," He repeated my phrase.

I watched as his eyes began to adjust to the sudden gentle glow of my table lamp. We sat in comfortable silence for a moment.

I looked down to my thighs for a moment, and began tracing the fading bruises. An array of purple, yellow, and green were splayed across a canvas of skin in the shape of fingerprints.

I scowled at my legs.

Jamie noticed, and led my gaze upward to his with his thumb, gently lifting my hand from my injuries.

"Can I see?" His voice tumbled through the air gently.

I nodded, and held out my bandaged forearms to him.

He slowly unraveled the gauze, leaving it draping at my sides.

Yesterday's look of pain rang in his eyes again as my lacerations stared him in the face, causing me to cringe.

More colors.

Varying tones of red, purple, rusty maroon, and pink crossed my arms like an obscure checker board.

Jamie let out half a gasp before biting his lip and suppressing the rest of it.

My body was a storm, both colorful and terrifying.

"Can I clean your wounds?" He mumbled, still staring in awe at my cuts.

"Okay," I stuttered, almost embarrassed by my body. "There, um, There's a first aid kit, um, in there." I pointed in the direction of my bathroom forming from the wall across from my bed.

Traces of light flickered from my bathroom. I could hear Jamie rummaging through the cabinets, returning with a plastic bin containing medical supplies.

Gently, he lifted each arm and placed soft kisses up to the elbow.

I really wanted to cry. I was told by my own family that this was wrong, that I was doing this to shock them. Nurses at the hospital told me that 'self mutilation' is an act of violence, and that I should consider a mental ward. I could feel the absence of tears welling in my chest, and it was frustrating.

But, I was again numb.

Jamie was then softly spreading salve on to my arms, paying more attention to the deep purple incisions. He finished, rewrapping the gauze in the spiral pattern it once was, pressing the medical tape near my wrists.

Why does only the relationship I made by choice care enough?

"I'm sorry," I whispered, looking downward and toying with the hem of the quilt.

"Sugar, you have nothing to be sorry about." He stood with the bin in his hands, and bent at the waist to land a kiss to my forehead.

The familiar rummaging sounded again, and the harsh tint of fluorescent bathroom light left the room. Then, I heard my faucet running, and the bathroom door close softly.

"Do you want to do something stupid?" I asked, grasping at Jamie's wrist and pulling myself up to a standing position.

"I'm all for stupid," He laughed, steadying me with a gentle hand on my shoulder.

"Did you have a seemingly okay childhood?" I asked shyly.

"The okayest," He quipped.

"Will you tell me about it?"

The sounds of the night fell across the room. Jamie's forehead wrinkles in concentration and I scolded myself in thought at my words. I concentrated on the hum of the ceiling fan.

I was about to apologize before he began talking.

"My mother worked at a bakery when I was a little kid, and she always came home smelling like flour and sugar," He began, and sat on the floor. I followed his lead, picking up a piece of scrap paper from under my bed and folding it in to obscure patterns.

"My dad did odd construction jobs. He also played poker on the weekends, and we moved around a lot to get away from loan sharks and shit. Did you know I was born in Montana? I'll always be a Hoosier at heart, though."

We sat for a few hours. His words were punctuated my my occasional question. Jamie told of his friends, Josh being the longest known. He had a sister who was now twenty-three and they rarely talked. His first kiss happened when he was eleven, and had his first relationship when he was fourteen, his second when he was fifteen.

The conversation morphed in to how his band formed. The club they regularly played at was owned by a man named Andy who used to deal him cigarettes in the tenth grade. Now, he gets them from Shane. His guitar lessons were from garage sale VHS tapes.

"Our next show is Wednesday. Apparently Andy's letting some kid garage band play until then. I'm kinda stoked to see them play. Its a nice change of sound."

When the last of his stories fell out of his mouth, I pushed myself up using the bed, and flopped backward on the mattress. We were tired, the light began to dust the floor from through the blinds.

The clock read four-twenty-eight in the morning, and I had yet to fall back asleep to get the least bit of rest. Sunday morning was the cruelest of times, simply because the hammer of school was lurking just hours away.

There was no doubt that they would ask around the bandages climbing my arms, or the limp I now helplessly donned in spite of the many Advil I took.

As much as other people denied it, Senior year was hell.

"Jamie ?" I croaked tiredly, a lazy smile pulling at my lips.

"Yeah, sugar?"His voice had grown scruffy throughout the night, but it was now the same curling grouse that reminded me of the many nights we spent at his apartment after his shows.

"Come sleep."

I slid off my jeans in to the floor, and watched Jamie kick his on top of mine, placing his wallet and keys on the nightstand. As we settled in to the bed, he pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it in to the pile of laundry.

"Goodnight, Jamie," I mumbled, pecking him on the nose before resting my head on the pillow.