An Introduction to Grief

In her twenty-three years of living, no one had told Annabel the protocol for grieving, which is why she showed no concern to be standing in the middle of her kitchen with only the urge to physically escape her own body. Because she didn’t know any better she let the pain go through her—pulse through her head and throughout her person.

Annabel could feel blobs of red and blue come together behind her eyes and jab at the back of her mind. She rolled her head around to let the colors come together and fall apart, making violent disgusting love. She stood up completely straight to feel the colors drip loudly down and puddle somewhere under her nose. She brought her fingers under her nose and lifted them in front of her eyes. She was bleeding. Automatically she sucked the blood off of her fingers and used her palm to take a definitive swipe. Just once. She let her bloody palm drop back down and bump gently against her thigh. The warm blood still dropped from her nose and pooled in the space just above her lips. Annabel’s eyes were stopped two feet in front of her. They hurt and her elbows felt funny, like they weren’t supposed to be there. Elbow. El. Bow. Ellllll boowwwwww.

The left side of her head started to feel heavy and began to fall. She let her body go with it until she was almost doubled sideways at the hip. From there she could hear everything come together, rushing towards her ears to recreate the upside-down feeling that had taken over her world.

She had to get out of herself. Annabel started to take her shirt off. She raised it above her head, revealing a full stomach of olive skin and ribs hugging around her lungs. The t-shirt barely touched the ground before she started unbuttoning her jeans and pulling them down so that they pooled around her ankles. She had to get the world off of her, away from her. She had to get the blood that had been dripping down her nose away from her mouth because it was falling down her chin and now down her chest.

Annabel looked up to the sink. Two steps hoisted her body up to the counter, both feet slapping into the metal basin. She turned the water on, cold, and watched it hit against her toes. Annabel cupped the water in her hands for a moment and then let go. It dumped it down her shins like a thousand knives clattering against her skin. She hunched her body over itself to mix the blood and water and tears together and drip down the front of her legs. The three liquids came together organically and followed their own path down the small hairs of her calf— each droplet taking an individual and frantic route. Annabel let her eyes fall closed and her head loll somewhere between her knees, her body cradling its own weight in an act of strange self-sufficiency. She could feel her skin completely lose sensation and submiss as the red bled out of her and the blue started to crawl up her toes.