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Obsessions, Compulsions Hazel Milla
When you asked why I bought you a tub mat I said I was worried about you because that’s easier to say than the whole truth: that I lie awake every night wondering when your strong, well body will sicken or when one of us will slip in the shower and crack her head open and bleed to death and that I regularly envision it happening because my mind would rather force sights on me than let me daydream. And it’s easier to say I have to scrub three times to feel clean and I have to check the doors just to be sure— not that I envision grime swallowing my fingers, constricting, digging under my skin not that I see people coming in the night behind my closed eyelids to hurt you, to make me face your injury, your death, and my mourning. And all I’ve ever done is prepare myself because I’ve guilt-tripped myself enough times to feel the weight of every possibility on my spine eased only by a third scrub (I can’t tell you why only that it is, only that I need to check one more time).
-Hazel Milla is a senior from Chapel Hill, NC, pursuing a major in Neuroscience and a minor in Creative Writing.-
