Hannah Karim - Multiple Works

A Stream of Consciousness that means Nothing, but actually Everything 

I didn’t know I was allowed to touch myself and like it before I met you. I only feel like I became a real person in the last year or so. I feel guilty for the things I never get caught doing. And I don’t like being the older sibling because I don’t like the pressure of having to be something for someone that I cannot even be for myself. And I don’t know what to do because I am bruised but not broken. And sometimes I wish I was broken because then it would no longer be my fault. And you tried, but you built things that couldn’t satisfy me, and it was nice to pretend for a while, but you mistook something meant to hurt as something meant to last. And you feed me lines of lives I’ve only seen as short vignettes. And I’ll beg anyone to give me any notion of self so that I can feel real. I like it when people tell me things about myself. I like it when they seem insightful doing so. I like it when those insights tell me that I haven’t been loved properly. I like when this is explained as if it is an interesting fact rather than a point of pity. I think the world puts away good things for people like you. I like to think there is just enough good out there for me as there is for you. I like to think that one day I will be a mom and I like to think that I won’t be terrible at it. I like to think that I will be able to have a daughter and give her more than I ever was and I like to think I will not resent her too much for it. I’d like to think these things and actually believe them.

Preamble to Breaking 

Stomach plummets, nonetheless, I push, I push past the brink of sanity, until it is lost, until I am certain it will never come back, just to find it on my bedside table in the morning. 

This is the bed I have made for myself. For myself, the sheets are soiled, the arrangement unkempt. For you, I’ll spray the mattress, hope your nostrils avoid the stench. 

Supposedly you enter me thinking more than thin outer lining remains. Traversing through the abandoned attic, you witness lack of upkeep, pervasive cobwebs, the residues of visitors not willing to stay. As you look at me, I see within your pupils a foggy reflection, opening wider to reflect back at me an image of irrevocable brokenness, until your eyes settle on a cruel glare, dripping with the conviction that all I hide away, all I really am, is all very bad and all very much my fault. 

I like to remember first giving you a part of myself, your boy-ish excitement, your false belief that you have caught something worth having. I remember your silhouette in the panel of the door, my sister’s swift appearance. Her hushed, stern tone, as she demanded you leave because 

you 

Break 

Me. 

Writing is my distraction from the Breaking. 

In the writings of my imagination, you drown in susceptibility, losing sight of any other cheap means of inspiration. To stay afloat, I cling to the notion that the fascination you have in the people you meet is fueled by the intensity of only knowing them for a short while and perhaps never knowing them at all, only ever acquainting yourself with the scripted image of what they desire to be and can only exist as for a fragment of time. 

I like to tell myself that I have climbed Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to a state of self-actualization that leaves me immune to the effects of someone’s presence or absence as if any number

of philosophy books or mental detoxes can numb out what it means to be human. It’s a facade I maintain quite well, until you are Breaking me from the doorway as I am begging you to stay. 

Because I told you what happened behind the rose gardens when I was freshly fifteen. And you can drown without even knowing. You can convince yourself it’s only water, what you are made of, as if it makes no difference, as if it is natural. So I will Break until I can no longer, until I lie, floating on my back, ears submerged, sounds echoing in reality’s aftertaste.

Extremities 

I appreciate the harshness of his sincerity until it bruises, what is left: a flesh wound, subtle, but nonetheless there. I know I am high strung. I know one day he will leave me for someone not, someone willing to loosen the knot, someone willing to not hang themselves in the process. I don’t know how to hold another hand without crushing bones, I’d like to taste you, but I don’t know how, not without losing higher consciousness. A lick of your skin becomes violence, my teeth sinking, your flesh weeping, stopping only after the blood runs out. It’s horrid, my urges, self-control might kill and bury, but I still smell the decay. I like that we pretend we are not carnal beings. With you, I pretend I am good. You ground me which is good, but you do so into soiled ground, to the roots of the truths I once succumbed to, but have since gladly slaughtered. To preserve stability, I lull to sleep the rawest parts of me, but I don’t know how much is left uneaten, until it is all gone. I’ve been starving long before I met you and I’ll be starving long after. I often leave the plate untouched, having learned that hunger is easier to digest than guilt. I told you about the grandparents that lived in the Adirondacks, how they built the home, the pond, carved a space just for them, just to abandon the wintry harshness for platonic sun-kissed Floridian blues when the years got too heavy, and if that’s not evidence for the limit on the person’s tolerance for pain, I don’t know what is, but I know I’m lying on my dorm bed, wishing I could sleep, wishing I could remember to take my meds. And the other night I didn’t mean it, I swear, but the bottle was there, the sertraline like eye candy, and I wished to taste it, if only all at once.