Athena Tan

via Photo Challenge: Transformation

THIS IS MY CONTEMPORARY TRANSFORMATION

It really hurts. I can feel it inside of me, moving around, wriggling coldly, not bothering to meld into the warm organs of mine. I hear it crying out, ready to wrench its wings out of its own back. The feathers make their way up my throat and tickle the inner column of my neck; I cough, chest  heaving, back bent, and for a moment the pain that flashes inwards, a shiver that spreads from my spine to my stomach, feels as if I am growing wings myself.

I cough out the feathers. They come out clean, not bloody. I do not want to add words to my statement, do not want to prolong my pain, but here they come—all of it—my head whirls as more and more feathers fly out of my ears, swooping out from every orifice in my body until it, residing inside of me, is satisfied. For now all I can see are shapes and the jagged edge of skeleton unfurling in my belly, slowly fanning, moving and leaving whispery scratches on the inner lining of my stomach.

There it is. There is the blood. It shrieks and this comes out as water from my eyes; I become a leaky faucet. I blink and more of it pours down, more of it pours out, out of me, dripping onto my lips, filling up the cracks in my chapped skin with salty, warm water. I do not like this. I do not like this. I do not like this.

There is no-one left. I am gone. It is as if I have been pushed ot of my own body by it, and I remain hovering at a corner of the room. my ceiling, my bedroom. I am scared, I am petrified, I start to urinate in my pants. There is no one to save me. No one to save me, no one to ground  me, I am already up here in the air with no wings, so it is assured that I will plummet. It has already inhabited my body and I know that it plans to reside there, a wingless, dirty, scrawny creature that hates all signs of me inside of my own body.

I gasp because I feel it again—I feel it wiggling into every little bit of me, sending heat blasting through all the pores of my body, of my skin. I feel it in hot flashes and a runny nose and leaky faucets for eyes and a scratched throat. It is so powerful that it can control me from afar; I am so scared, I am so s-s-cared, I am s-s-so  s-s-s-scared, for it is grabbing me by the muscles and the tendons with strings connected to its fingers, it is dragging me up and down and up and down and smashing me against the ceiling and the plaster is falling onto my tongue and all I can see is grey, grey, grey and the very human flesh of my body,

and it inside of me. Inside of me up here, in the air, neck craned, body balanced, every fibre of me in pain. Inside of me down there, lying on my bed, its little, wretched skeleton twisting and turning, its little, pearly teeth—smooth and curvy unlike its horrid frame!—breaking into a grin. A curve that disrupts the lips of my body on the bed; I can only watch in horror as my lips, once straitlaced by the emotion of myself up in the air, willing themselves—my lips, my lips, my gorgeous lips—to not break into a smile, do not listen to it, remain loyal to me, you are the only part of me that is me that is controlled by me that can hear feel hear feel hear FEEL me, you are the only one left.

The door to my bedroom opens. My mother steps in, and I come flying down, into my body.

BONUS:

I feel the solidity of myself, of my being, and let my mother brush the hair off my face and tuck me back under the covers. “You are…twenty-six, my boy, my baby…always stressful. Always anxious. Don’t let it get to you, and gobble you up.”

I close my eyes, grounded.

YIKES IT WAS MEANT TO BE A PHOTO CHALLENGE! Well, words paint pictures, too. My interpretation!

‘It’ is stress—but it could be anxiety, negative energy…–it transforms you in scary ways, and you need to trust that you can get back to who you are.

a/n: There’s so much going on nowadays; we live in busy cities, we don’t care if we get sick as long as we clock in those hours, we are worried about our families back home but no longer have the time for a hug. Please, please remember to take care of yourself, your mind and your overall wellbeing, and that you are not only living for yourself, or for the stress that may consume you and TRANSFORM you…

You are living for the love that people who you hold dear have given to you, too.

I pledge to not let stress transform me, and if it does, to let myself learn how to be whole, step by step, with love and support.

 © athenatjx