Such Sharp Teeth

by Rachel Harrison

I thought that the map of this place was etched into me, that I could navigate from muscle memory, but I guess time erases the things you least expect.

It’s a particular form of torture that I wish I were alone in, though I know I’m not. For some reason I can never fully trust my own experience. I’m always treating myself like an unreliable witness. I offer no empathy, only an endless cycle of interrogation.

The damage is there, but it’s ghost damage, haunting my body like it’s a goddamn Victorian manor. No one can see it but me. No one knows it’s there except for me.

She, like me, suspects that exhibiting a sliver of vulnerability will cause the universe to implode.

Bad things have a way of severing your life into “before” and “after.” It’s really annoying.

It’s almost graceful in its movements, careful and calculated. But it’s a predator, so it can’t be graceful, because grace is a virtue, and predator’s virtues all serve a violent purpose, so they really aren’t virtues at all.

Denial is hard to sustain. It requires constant effort. The truth might not be pleasant, or logical in this case, but it’s easy. I don’t need to assign myself to it. It just is.

I learned young how to pretend like bad things never happened.

These are the kind of things old friends know about you. It’s what makes them as dangerous as they are precious. They’re plutonium.

“All right,” I say, my best attempt at a pep talk. “All right.”

When you’re young, you’re oblivious to what is rare because you don’t have enough experience to identify it.

When you’re sad, you cry. When you’re happy, you smile, you laugh. But what do you do when you’re angry? Not just mad, but filled with this ugly, consuming rage? And the thing is, women aren’t allowed to be angry. Nobody likes a mad woman. They’re crazy, irrational, obnoxious, shrill.

She can’t heal me, and I can’t heal her. No matter how badly we want to heal each other, we can heal only ourselves.

I voluntarily watch about half an hour of local news. That’s how I know I’m depressed.

The werewolf thing only enhances all the parts of me that were already broken and wrong. It’s trapped me with the worst of myself. It’s my reckoning.

“I’m usually pretty quick to skip to sad,” he says. “If something’s bothering me, I just shut down. Get quiet. I don’t yell. It can be frustrating for people close to me.” “That you’re quiet?” “Yeah,” he says. “That when I’m feeling some type of way, I disconnect. Sometimes I wish I could yell. Have that external release. Get out whatever’s going on in my head.”

But I guess the forgiveness isn’t for her. It’s for me. Because it’s either that or taking her head off with my teeth. There’s no more in-between.

When you’re anxious, if you name three things you see, three sounds you hear, and then move three parts of your body, it’s supposed to help calm you down. The 3-3-3 rule.

It’s a miracle and it’s a curse, the secrets our bodies keep. The ability to carry the invisible burden of these secrets.

But with no music or podcast, I have nothing to listen to but my own thoughts.

“Once I stopped thinking about what my life wasn’t going to be, I started to see what it could be.

My strength doesn’t come from the bad things that have happened to me. It defies those things.

It’ll be all right. No matter what, I’ll be all right.

“You can’t free yourself of pain by causing pain. If you don’t take measures to control yourself, all you’ll do is cause pain. There’s no relief in destruction. I think you know that.”