Homeless For Now

Freezing rain, on the street, on the benches like slippery sheets, on the roofs of small houses and skyscrapers alike, the world is a fridge, and we are the chopped meat that has two months to go until thawed.

I lay there on a bench, unsheltered under the freezing rain, the chill of it sticking to my skin (I couldn’t get up in fear of developing an open wound) and it sucked me in. Not a sock on my foot, not a handkerchief on my leg, I just lay there nude, exposed like a snail without a shell (you could kill me with salt).

My spine (a bone) pressing against the bench of stone, little bruises cropping up all across my body like hickeys from a pixie. The toes of my feet and the tips of my fingers bright red (I hoped the cardinals wouldn’t mistake them for berries). I looked at my chest and saw that it compressed to remind myself that I was breathing, although the ribs poked out so far out that I was scared they’d collapse like a rusted old dome. I could feel the ice clumps in between my eyelashes- each time I blinked it got heavier. Then a shadow came over me, I looked at myself and made sure it wasn’t my own. It wasn’t.

Hello, he said, and he took a puff of his cigarette and the rat poison swirled like dragon smoke over my head but I was unable to sense its fumes. He was a man, I could tell, a bit older than I, a bit bulkier than I, and I could tell he had blackened teeth when he talked.

Am I dying? I seem to be dissolving right into the icy bench, just look at me, look at my purplish body (like that of a corpse found in an avalanche), I said.

No, he said, his fingers shaking as he took the cigarette from his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. Then he took the lit little thing and put the burning end to my stomach. I saw the burn on my body, the mark of the cigarette butt, a black dot on my icy body.

Do you feel that? He asked.

No, I replied. Because I did not feel a damn thing.

He brought his face uncomfortably close to mine, he was so close that the tips of our noses were touching and I could make out the raven feet on the skin of his face. And I felt his tongue in my mouth like a limp leech carcass swimming around in my spit, but I did not taste his smoky mouth or the warmth streaming from his deep exhales. I did not feel a damn thing.

OhgodI’mdyingaren’tI

He shushed me with his fingertip. I was numb to pleasure, numb to pain, numb to sensation other than coldness, I’mdyingI’mdying…

You’re not dying, dear, you’re homeless, he told me.

I was confused because I have a home and I have a comfortable bed throne and a flat screen television and a grey carpet I have a home.

He explained to me: you’re homeless because you’re not living inside your body.

I gasped and looked at my body again. The ribs more prominent than ever (looking tasty, would be good on the Montana’s menu), the legs wrapped in bruises, the chest frostbitten, and I did not feel a damn thing.

Where am I living then, if not in my own body?

Why does it matter? You’re alive! You can’t say that about many people.

I was stuck to that bench and I talked to that man that I barely knew and when the ice heaved down on my eyelashes badly, I had no choice but to close them.

Am I dying or am I just being reborn? It is all a process, but for now I’m homeless and I’m reduced to being a hermit crab without a shell, scouting for a tin can or something to put myself in, exposed in the freezing rain.