Chapter 1
You understand what they are saying and you know it’s important but you’re also thinking, thinking, how do I get out of this? Sometimes you also think, how do I make this stop? Sometimes you have to stop thinking and just choose whether to be in the dreadful moment or distance yourself. You’re not yet ready to lose yourself so you stay present, painfully present, when all along you wish to be somewhere, anywhere else.
You deny the other challenge to your focus: you are ill, dying, trying hard to ignore those little annoyances and read the face of your tormentor, coming at you to do what?
He’s not shouting; his fury is too deep for that. He growls a few words at you and you gaze down at him with hooded eyes, your mouth open as if to speak but you have nothing to say to this man; the universe would explode if you told him a tenth of what you feel.
You’re hiding in plain sight. If he were not so angry he could see that you are not wasting your fear on him.
His headband (your blindfold, pulled down) still clings to your neck, more odor than cloth, and he’s come to fetch it, but he’s seething, and it’s not his fault so it must be yours. He’s a man who never loses his temper and now he’s lost it twice in a day. You’re not actually thinking that; you’re feeling that. You’re reading that and you’re reading, therefore, unpredictability. He stops pulling the headband against your throat so he can shake his fist in your face. Your face has nowhere to go. He could open his fingers and hit your chin without moving his hand, even with your head tilted back. He could pull his headband more tightly around your neck. He looks about to clock you and your eyes say, all right, if it has to happen, it has to happen. You’re not bracing yourself. You’re giving in to it. He pulls the wretched cloth so fiercely that you wince, and the wince freezes into resentment, and you don’t even bother to hide that, because you’d winced at the violent gesture but then you winced at the betrayal of the wince.
