memory foam
this is something i wrote a while ago, but i like it enough to put it here. this is from a collection of vignettes that ill probably post at some point.
When I was a kid, I shared a bedroom with my brother. We had two twin beds that we pushed together, and purple walls that were too sad of a color of purple. I first had my own room when I was thirteen. I cleaned out three hundred coat hangers from my dad's old office. Everything smelled a little like mildew, even when I bought a vanilla air freshener it just burnt itself in the outlet.
My dad made me a desk and found me a chair. The desk drawer didn't close all the way, and my brother would steal coins from the spot where I kept them; saved for the gumball machine. My chair was yellow with age, and its cover was falling apart in all of the places. I picked the foam out from between the fabric scraps instead of picking at my fingernails and at my face.
I wanted to see the insides of things. I wanted to take apart computers and collect the keycaps to use as something I hadn't thought of. I wanted to pick apart the yellow foam from the chair, I held the foam in my hands and it was rough yet soft like sand. I would press it to my face and feel it on my cheeks, like a kiss from someone who hasn't shaved in too long. I didn't really want to see the inside of my skin. I picked cuticles with some sort of impulse, and spent hours staring at myself in the mirror. My skin wouldn't heal faster if I would pick at scabs, yet I didn't feel any pain when I did it and I spent too long looking at the insides of everything.
My mom scratched my mosquito bites when I was younger and she used to blame herself for everything.
