Days of Dust

It’s a Saturday, and it’s dawn, and it’s dark.

There is a to-do list thumb-tacked tightly to the cork-wood and you wrote the words in all-caps just to try and make yourself remember—there are things to do when you feel like you want to hurt. There are other things to do.

You tell yourself that Recovery is mostly made up of Bad Days; that it’s normal to wake up sometimes and feel like you’ve regressed. You tell yourself I am alive. You tell yourself I won’t forget. But there’s a cloud of dust outside, and maybe it’s just the weather but there’s been more Bad Days than there’s been Good, and now you don’t know if you’re allowed to call it Recovery anymore.

See, the crescent moons on your spine are like braille for a mind blinded with fear—they help you read, they help you understand, but when it starts, where does it stop? Will it end with knives or with heads against walls, where it’s almost already gone before?

But it’s a Saturday, and it’s dawn, and it’s dark.

And maybe it’s the quietness—except, no, everything always feels much louder here—but now you lock yourself up in your room to escape all the dust and all the clouds that hide the horizon away, neatly tucked into the Mediterranean, neatly tucked, neatly tucked where the little boy washed up, where the corpses made up our own to-do list in all-caps, thumb-tacked notes, which we ignored, again, because isn’t it easier to forget, isn’t it easier to chalk it all up to a Bad Day, and the weather, maybe, and dig our little crescent graves instead of going for a walk, instead of lifting people up by venturing beyond the dust?

Another Saturday, another dawn, and it’s still dark.

The Tisroc and the King (Narnia)

The Left Behind (Narnia)

A Riddle of Nekhenu (Harry Potter/Egyptian Mythology)

Just like Us (Harry Potter)