Fingernails

Abby Harvey

Content warning: themes of mental illness, explicit blood and skin picking, brief mention of self-harm

I can’t remember a time when my nails haven’t been bitten down to the cuticle, jagged and sore. Our family photo albums have picture after picture of my tiny fist in my mouth; a mirror image of my dad. He’s been biting his nails for as long as I can remember. I suppose I was doomed to have this habit before I was born. I’m not sure if that makes it hereditary, or if there’s something to be drawn from children copying their parents’ habits. There’s a photo of us centre-page, watching ‘The Wiggles’, fingers between lips. I can’t see any anxiety on his face, but the feeling is familiar.

I don’t know what it’s like to have fingernails that aren’t constantly bloody and tender. No amount of reflection can unblur the lines of whether this constitutes self-soothing or harm. I missed girlhood rites of passage; sitting alone at the kitchen bench while I waited for my friends to finish painting their nails. I once coated mine in iridescent purple, the oozing polish stung as it seeped into my broken skin. None of the other girls had that problem.

At times, I can’t help but gnaw and pick and bite until I can’t feel anything but my pulse thrumming in my fingertips. Every thought takes centre stage, and my only reprieve has become reflexive. My feelings are reduced to this silent, dull throb, settling in the most isolated parts of my body. When I struggle to type because every push of a key sends a shooting pain right back up into my hands, I resent the strength of my heart. When the tenderness gets too much. When I find that I can’t hold my toothbrush, turn my steering wheel, or squeeze my lover’s hand.

I can only hope that he doesn’t pin my hesitance on anything but my weeping fingernails. I sit against him, my hands tucked between my knees and the couch, horrifically embarrassed. Hoping he won’t catch a glimpse of the pain I’ve caused myself, of the concave cuticles, dented from searching teeth. I want to run my hands through his hair, to twist every black curl between the pads of my finger and thumb. But I’m afraid that if my hands aren’t contained, my self-destructive anxiety will melt into his skin. I hope that my words hold him, in the way that my hands want to, but won’t allow. I can almost see them brushing against his chin, trailing down his shirt and slotting between his own perfectly fine fingers.

Sometimes I wish my heart wasn’t so full. That I was somehow able to avoid this constant, anxious pain, spanning almost two decades. I imagine going back in time and clasping my own chubby fists shut, whispering that the ache in our chest is not all we are. Even then, I know it won’t stop the blood from my veins pouring out of my bruised fingernails, as it has since I was first able to move my hands to my lips.

My Mama's Marigolds

Content warning: contains themes of death and terminal illness

Cheap 70’s plexiglass, fluoro-orange.

A grinning font, all cap’, beams from embossed plastic:

“VERY TENDER”

A palm-sized sign with a gleaming spike to puncture hunks of thick wadded meat. In the 90’s my parents—radical vegetarian activists—pricked it into wax sculptures of human meat displayed in a butcher shop window. My dad made a mould of his ass. Ha.

It was in the papers and caught all the passers-by in double takes. Now it rests with a fat glob of blue tack on my door, a precursor.

I work at a grocery store liquor shop and when I brought Dhal in for lunch (which my radical vegetarian parents taught me to cook) I made friends with a woman working hard to save up money for a holiday back home (in India with her family) and it was a sweet and friendly conversation (the kind that means you always share a genuine smile with every hello after) but when she asked about my family (which we hadn’t discussed before) she mentioned it casually (like we had) and... Look. I never lie and so I don’t know why I did, but I did. And now I’m just thinking it could be that I wouldn’t have known how to answer the question of what happened? But anyway, so…I just clammed up and lied. Said, ‘They’re good,’ and ‘they live far away.’

It takes the courage of a lion to wear your heart on your sleeve. The whole, pulsing lot of it.

To not cook off the fat, slice its tendons, shuck the bones.

Once I told a customer about my parents (rare) and he trilled, ‘ohmygoooooossshhhh me tooooooooo.’ A limp handed air slap and roll of the eyes.

Under my hard-candy-shell veneer, it pricked me. Didn’t he feel the bruising and aching of a person my age with no one? No one of blood, that is.

I do have someone. My grandad.

He’s kind of become my best friend.

He’s due to die any day now.

He isn’t shy about the topic of death with me, and I can feel him ease at my ease. Like a Pringles can opening. A suck of air and release. It must be a lonely venture. Everyone around you squirming like maggots, fussing.

“TENDER: 1. showing gentleness, kindness and affection.”

My Granddad. My Normie, can swindle any smile with his charm and kindness. He’s good at laughs too—making them and having them. When my mum told him that my sister was trans, there was not a second wasted on any type of phobia. Only love.

Almost extra-terrestrial for a man of the silent generation.

“2. (of food) easy to cut or chew; not tough.”

Normie has a tumour in his throat that makes it very painful to swallow. He’s living on soups, juices, KFC gravy and mashed potato slurries.

When I was a child, we’d ‘come over’ to his house, and he’d cut spuds into thick wedges and fry them in his one-person deep fryer.

We’d have them with tomato sauce and salad. He’d have it sans sauce; an Englishman. Alone, he’d have them with steak. Never with us though.

My partner has started having their meals alone, mine not being solid enough anymore: Dhal, fried rice, Tom Yum, Aloo Curry, Jambalaya, garbage plate, noodles, and all shapes and colours of pasta. Their rotation is something like hot dogs, burgers, pizza, oven chicken, sometimes pasta, bacon and eggs.

I can’t seem to eat now that it’s only for me.

Me! A glutton and life-long foodie, will starve because I can’t think of a thing, I can be bothered wrapping my lips around and chewing. My mum always imagined me marrying ‘a nice vegetarian boy’.

He loosens.

He lays out full pelt what is bothering him.

He knows about mum and I’s *not-talking*.

Normie is straight terror: another dent in our busted-up lineage and clean out of time to fix it.

He bolsters his anger at me, over and over.

I sob and dry scream at him— the whole, pulsing lot of it.

Me against his only daughter.

I am straight terror I have no one.

We rumble and clash and yell hideously and talk over each other for the first time in our lives.

‘I don’t want you to die thinking that bad stuff about me, because it isn’t true.’

After shove and fall back, and shove, and fall back, he understands That extra-terrestrial empathy.

‘It’s only that I need to be my own person, like you have always needed, Normie. And I don’t know how to do that with mum right now. She still thinks I’m the same person as her.’

That I’m still rocking in her womb.

I promised him I’d always find my way back to my family, that it wasn’t forever and never would be.

“3. NAUTICAL (of a ship) leaning or readily inclined to roll in response to wind.”

Later, Normie and I sit in a dinky food court in my hometown sipping Laksa. He’s never heard of it before.

In Summer we go on a date to Melbourne and see a gold-class spy movie. We have bubble tea, no bubbles. He’s never heard of it before.

On his birthday, I come to his apartment with homemade Tom Kha, the big vegetable bits spooned out of his portion and into mine. He’s never heard of it before.

Through our ‘not-talking’, mum and I had agreed to keep it all from Normie.

I call him, getting off the bus from work one afternoon. The sun is shining, and I know a chat with him will only further brighten my day. We chat as we often do, but he seems in low spirits, turning down my comedic volleys.

I get home.

We sit together for hours talking over a gin. He’s heard of it before. He prefers whiskey.

‘I like to have these conversations with you before I go.’

Cavernous Skylar Klease

I spend most of my days

Bruised in Blue and impinged upon. Scratched and Scarred from Barb-wired friends. Who mistake my Skin For a Cardigan.

Paralysed in Purple Waiting for a face to fit The shape of my ache. Rendered hapless, Shapeless, and Gummy.

Nothing but plum, Numb, A bag of grape Sour Patch Kids.

I spend most of my days

Scorched in Red, By that Royal Gala Radiator, Raptured on my Sleeve. By that gargantuan furnace, blazing between my ribs. The one that heats your frosty fingertips, That beats behind the slope of my chest, Where your head indents.

Tender Burns, Swollen swatches of Flesh: The price at which I pay For Loving Tenderly.

I spend most of my days Away for Good Favour. Sparing myself from the feelings, Found in the melodies that weep me to sleep. Saving myself from a Time when Tenderness wrecked my ___ Leaving me winded and wrought.

At this Time

Tender heart of mine, Was lulled softly. She Broke quietly In Shut-Door Privacy. Was Stung, Sliced and Scraped from the Sharpness Of Sentimentality.

At this Time Weeks washed over me. The tidal waves that were; my kernelled cul-de-sacs, and blizzardous blunders

Flooded my ear canals in fluorescent labyrinths. So, I could not hear you— —Softly treading, Floating past my cartilage. Rhythmic beating of Heartbeats and Humdrum.

So, I did not see you— —Taking stock In my primordial soup.

It was a blindness Deafness, Senseless Past. I was ripe for Tender’s taking.

I spend most of my days

At bay with ardent fervour, Avoiding memorabilia that offsets my melancholy. To relinquish myself from the Time where Tenderness stained my Skin. In shades deeper, than any;

Blue, Purple or Red.

At this Time

I’d lay facing your back. Tracing the rivers and valleys, between your shoulder blades. Finding consolation in Sacredness Withheld.

I’d lay in pearly white sheet; Listening and Curling, Cavernous & Chattering. Craving heat You do not bestow.

I’d be sleepy, bitten by impossible patience. Dense with acrylic, pastel, oils

From painting the Spine and Torso You turned away from me.

It was a Tiresome, Lonesome, Burdensome

Long Ago. A Wage

Not worth the Cost.

I spend most of my days Cavernous; Cool from Deep Heat, Crouched in Green Sheets.

Waiting for the Face of my ache

To halt its time, away from me.

Waiting for your warmth

To return to the ramp between my breasts. Raw and Frozen Indented Chest.

The Pain and slow Decay Of Loving Tenderly.