By Kiera Dennis-Espinal
Taste
You smack your lips and taste your own saliva. It probably tastes like nothing but blood from your fingers. What did you eat today? You bring your finger back to your mouth to try to sneak your finger under the nail, but you wince when your teeth come in contact with the skin. You are hungry. So very hungry, but you shouldn’t eat. You shouldn’t eat so late cause you’ll get fatter. You shouldn’t eat so much or you’ll get fatter. Again, you try to bite your nails, managing to get a piece. You chew it with your front teeth, then swallow. Is that filling for you?
Smell
There has been this lingering scent that makes your nose scrunch up. It isn’t bad, but it isn’t pleasant. Is it from the bowls and plates that sit in this room, or is it the scent you are building up on your clothes that you’ve worn back to back? I know the thought lingers that you might not be clean, but you don’t get up to do anything about it. You always let the problem linger until you get told to fix it or it disappears. You standup from your bed and walk over to your dresser. You pick up a perfume bottle, sniffing the pump of it to see which one you would spray to get rid of the scent. That one is too overpowering, that one will make the smell worse, that one is just disgusting. Why do you have these if you don’t like or use them?
Sight
You are looking at your hands. Your cuticles are ripped to shreds by your own teeth. Your nails have been chewed down to the point where your teeth can’t scrape under them to continue chewing. The exposed skin to the air looks pink and ugly. You flip your hands over to look at your dry palms that you managed to scratch raw with your chewed nails. The eczema on your hands makes your skin irritated and coarse. Your fingers are trembling from god knows what. You watch them tremble with a grimace on your face that you see through the corner of your eye through the mirror. You turn back to the mirror to see your disheveled hair. You desperately need a style.
Hearing
The sound of snoring makes you glance over at the other bed in the room. So loud for such a small kid. The younger one mumbles and whines in his sleep, telling his cousin what to do. He plays so much that he even dreams about it. The older one lays with his eyes open staring at the iPad that plays videos you don’t understand the humor of. You walk over to the window to open it to try to get rid of that lingering smell. You can hear the skittering of animals outside. Is it cats or skunks this time? That will make the smell bad. Close it. No? Okay.
Touch
You can feel your own teeth dragging against your bottom lip trying to find a wisp of lifted skin to bite off. You feel your fingers scratching your palms trying to satisfy the itch. You reach for the open jar of Vaseline and rub some into your palms. You pause then rub some into your lips trying to get rid of the dryness. You stare at yourself in the dark through the mirror. Your hands reach for your phone on the bed. You drag your finger across the screen that has some form of food that has crusted on part of your screen. Holding up the phone you snap a picture with the flash on. You stare at the photo dragging your finger against the gross screen to zoom in.
Feeling
You probably feel gross. You probably think you’re so dramatic with your shaking hands. You look dramatic. Your ugly unkept hair probably makes you feel like shit. Your dirty mismatched clothes are draped over you covering your shape. At least you think it does. You look bad. You should feel bad. You probably felt ugly in that picture to you. You tap on your phone, deleting it from existence but it probably resides in your mind. You climb into bed under your blanket as the light from your phone shines dully under it. You’re probably gonna cry again like you always do at night. You probably always feel Like this but I’m usually asleep before I can witness it. Whatever. I look back at my iPad and tap on another video that you probably feel is stupid.
Kiera Dennis-Espinal is a writer and aspiring producer. She enjoys fiction writing more than anything. She uses her writing in hopes to draw out feelings whether they’re uncomfortable, angry or sad. She hopes to have a career in whatever she feels the most comfortable with.
Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels.com
