Breathe.
It’s an excuse to breathe deeply. An excuse to step outside. To be alone. The first inhale is always a surprise. The first exhale always a relief. Paper holding a plant with a manufactured end.
It’s always at the half way mark that the calming effect starts to affect you. Waking you from any worries. Helping you make sense of thoughts. Maybe it is just the time alone doing this. Or the deep breaths. In, hold, out.
Being able to soak in your surroundings. Listen to the sounds around you. Natural sounds. Tasting the drink you brought out with you. Coffee is an excellent morning companion.
By the end you are calm, relaxed, focused. Sometimes you have an energetic buzz. It’s this point where you contemplate having another, to prolong the calm. But no. You get up. You walk back inside. Back to chores. Back to jumbled thoughts. Back to chaos.
Woman with nosebleed.
At first, upon catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the sink she didn’t notice it. She spent time washing each finger individually, carefully managing to not scrub the already raw bits of her hands. The soap dispenser had a dent in the side of it’s plastic globe shaped container where someone had squeezed it too hard, this kind of thing agitated her. She turned it round so it wasn’t facing her. It still felt wrong. Once she had finished her hands were bright red and burning, this felt good. She could feel the heat in her hands as she brought them to her face, barely touching the square and abrupt jawline she hated so intensely. Her hands quickly dried, not just paper-towel-dry, but bone dry, she could feel her skin beginning to peel off the pads of her thumbs as she grazed them across her cheeks. It was now that the slow trickle of blood descending from her nose onto the slight shelf on her top lip became apparent. She was surprised she hadn’t felt it before - now it was all she could feel. It felt like she was crying. She licked the blood from above her lip, and held her head back. It was slick and warm. This was a common occurrence. She prayed that nobody came into the toilets as she methodically twisted tiny rolls of tissue into thin wads and carefully inserted them into each nostril. Once she had secured them in place, she swiftly knocked the soap dispenser into the bin below the sink - it was making her nauseous - and went about wiping down the sink, removing any soap scum and making the taps gleam. She could feel her insides writhing, she needed to leave, or someone would walk in and find her on her hands and knees scrubbing at public toilets. She gripped the porcelain sink very tightly forcing the little bulbs of her knuckle joints to look as though they were stretching her skin. After taking several deep breaths she removed the twisted tissue paper from her nostrils, washed her hands a final time with a hand-sanitizer she kept in her handbag and tried to block out the rest of the room.
