I never start. And I hear the gun go off and watch, motionless, as they all become blurs into the street. I keep staring at this long white line like it’s going to crawl behind me, like I still think it’s possible to end up on the other side of it.

I live here. A thermometer under my tongue as the babies cry in the waiting room and they tell me it’ll just be a few more minutes till the doctor is in. This one is the best in the city, the lady with stretched, black tattoos tells me as she cradles her deformed child.

I want to pat her head, because she doesn’t know that “the best” is something they tell the young. I am older than her graying hair and fading ink, thinking she can still throw her infant over that white line. You can’t throw anything that isn’t meant to fly.

The Best Doctor gives a handshake like he’s grasping air, deaf and songless, in his empty grip. He knows that looking in my eyes is only good for lying. Maybe he’s the best because every time I dare a glimpse of his face he’s staring at the papers.

I know he likes those days that the blurs come in, out so quickly it’s like they were never here at all. He can feel their grip, so sturdy it could tack the diplomas to his wall.

The first time.

I was naked in the hallway, grasping scripts like some sort of pay off for services rendered. Awake and bled, in the open light of day with sticky-thighs, and no translations.

I leave now, separated. Like maybe we’re both fucking me apart. Like it’s a team effort, ripping out every strand of reason and aspiration. Like it belongs to someone else. Like when I walk out the door we’ll both be shaking our heads and our wallets in dispassion. The moment has passed, and the sheets are not ours to clean.

My body is a cape, one effervescent fabric stretched across four poles. Every morning I wake with arms arrowed, one spidery hand over the other, like a diver taking his plunge. With every step I see my fingers become sharp, foreign things, garden sheers one day—a swan’s beak the next. I move as if compressed between a ship and the flat of the ocean. I rip. I stroke. I tear. And the fabric only ripples like the swollen belly of an old man. My hands smooth over the material, asking with my fingers, why won’t it release?

It only comes down from the poles, so thin and opalescent it takes several breaths to reach my hands. I wrap it around me, covering every inch as I begin to realize how cold I’ve been, and as the cape becomes my fingers they tinge blue with agitation.  My skin wrinkles, as if in apology.

But I don’t want to hear its regrets, just want to back away with the speed I couldn’t find at the starting line. I want to back out so quickly that I can watch as the cape quakes in my shape before falling, falling.

I want to run.

From scripts. From her and her baby. From thermometers. Away from white lines.

Not starting knows nothing of being effortless.

One Response to “Starting Line”