Muscle Memory.

Feet slamming against the crooked wooden planks, I race down the stairs, pulling myself around the bannister at the end. 

I’m here, I’m ready. 

Shit, glasses. Back up I go. 

Knuckles tight against the wheel, feet juddering. Same roads, same home. 

Left or right? 

I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on, he laughs. I laugh. How could I forget? Yet the road feels uncertain, bends and curves whirling in my eyes, coiling in my stomach. You’re thinking too hard, muscle memory. Breathe in, hold in, be solid. 

Linoleum floors, too-bright lights, sanitised odour. I lean over the pine desk, hair falling. I’ve been here a thousand times - why don’t I know what to say?

You’re kidding! You can’t even remember my birthday? You’re my mother. 

Plastic slipping on skin, ridge boring into knuckle. I try not to feel the receptionist's eyes drag down my face, 15? 16? 200.. What now? My eyes burn, I need to sleep more. Paper creasing in my too-slick hands as I shove it back. Squeak of movement as I shuffle myself to the waiting room, wincing, waiting for another mistake.  

Yet, that night, sleep doesn't come. In the filtered light of night-time bustle, silence thick in the air, I watch my raised hand curve and twist in front of me. I watch the light as it dances, highlighting the lumps, curves and ridges. I think of all they’ve touched - felt - known. Instincts that lie in them, movements and brushstrokes that have since fallen through the cracks in my brain. 

Piano, when I was 13. Chords and melodies of some dead man that I cannot remember. I wonder if the answers lie in the mechanical working of my muscles. I wonder if they can guide me where my brain falters. 

My eyes flutter, suddenly heavy, fingers mapping out the rows of white and black. The objective harsh reality of sound relativity. Twirling through air, I trace a once familiar noise. G, E♭, D, C… I can almost feel the cold touch brimming with vibration, the pedal beneath me, resisting just right.  

I open my eyes. 

Suddenly, the serenity turns sour - alien. Somewhat disembodied. Hands warp to a tune I can’t quite place. I can’t help but feel that if I were to close my eyes again, they would disappear. Knowledge, fruit, far beyond my reach once more. 

Perhaps I will disappear. I’m aware of the aching, crushing heaviness of my body in the bed, my room, my house. The too soft, too light, sensation of my hair on my pillow. I feel rushing in my veins, not blood. Something soft, fuzzy around the edges. Static, buzzing, pushing, trying. I drop my hands, half expecting them to faze through me, atoms to meet, or not meet, at the exact right time, but instead they slam, dropping on my forehead. My eyes flare with static. Sleep, eventually, strikes. 

The soft clarity of my grandmother rings in my head. 

Don't take yourself so seriously! 

So I don't. I learn to smile when they do. I learn to laugh. I learn to be present in my absent mind. I learn to be the joke. I learn to not feel the heat of my cheeks when another date passes me by. I stay grounded in the rush of blood. 

It's just what she's like. 

Is it? I was strong. Present. Reliable. I'm there. I care. I can't help the fog. I'm sorry. 

Laughter turns to bemusement. Turns to annoyance. Turns to anger.

You weren't there!

Thursday? Friday? I'm sorry, I tried. You know what I'm like? 

How could you forget? 

How? How? How? I don’t know, I don’t-

I’m stopped. Hand around my shoulder, jerking me around. I’m forced to turn, feet shuffling, eyes blinking - adjusting to the light. And the face. 

Faces, bizarre. I’ve never really considered the strangeness of the visage until now. Same components as all, two eyes (blue), accompanied with eyebrows (thin), a nose (unremarkable) and a mouth (smiling). Yet it’s so unfamiliar, so disturbing, the wide grin of it all. I can tell from the bright light in the rounded eyes, wrinkles defined at either side and the sharp intake of breath, the one you take before a noise that almost resembles a squeal, that I should know this face. 

But I don’t. 

The static fuzz begins to creep in, vision curling like a picture under flame, distorting and melting. My body begins to hum - weightless energy. Grappling to stay in the now, I feel myself lifting dizzying limbs in mirrored gesture, mouth forming the cold ‘O’ of recognition. Fleeing is my only choice. Survival Instinct.  

Now it’s just me and my shame, the perfect pair. 

Still, mechanical muscle memory leads me once more to the warm familiarity of home. One constant. I smile at him, and he smiles back. 

I heard you saw my sister. 

Sister? No, couldn’t be. But then, it is. Thick dark hair, tall slender legs - that face - it slots into place like the most obvious jigsaw of all. 

His sister.

Bile rises in my throat.  

What is wrong with me? 

Solitude is safest. Relief elusive, only found in the pauses and breaths, in the moments of emptiness and unclaimed possibility. In the company of my reflection alone, nothing goes wrong. I sit, melody floating around my head, and picture rolling fields and open skies. I feel the light on my skin and the wind in my hair. Freedom comes at a cost, but I’ll pay. After all, I’m skilled at hiding. Locking myself away. I’ve mastered taking their anger, at my failings and weakness and fear and distorting it. Now I simply don’t try. 

At least they’re not worried anymore. 

I take comfort in the mechanical workings of flesh and blood. The body remembers, where the mind forgets. Muscle memory. 

Until. 

Cross, left, right, wait. Right (or was it left), no. Now straight. Past the grey house (or was it right), turn around! Left, right, cross, wait. You’ve been here before! No, that way! 

The labyrinth of brutalist architecture consumes me, pavement turning into rivers, washing me further, and further away. I’m drowning in my memory, washing out to sea. Flushed face, racing pulse - static for skin. 

Help me, I don’t know where I am. 

He makes me go after that. To bright lit rooms and dim lit eyes. To words of ‘sorry’, and ‘diagnosis’ and ‘treatment’ and ‘terminal’. To images of brains, weak wrinkled hands clasped together in 'support' and the emptiness of hope. To words that begin with D and end in tragedy. To looks of sympathy, and disgust. Of love, and embarrassment.

What a shame. What a shame. 

I lose it all, hopes and plans replaced with a handful of colourful tablets placed on my tongue. I lose happiness to daydreams of grass and a forgotten waltz. I lose days to staring at the patchwork of melting faces, eyes and ears blending into an all-seeing, all-hearing mass. 

It’s me, mam. 

Love? Did you hear me? 

Your brother, remember? 

I feel a weight push me from behind. 

Don’t take yourself too seriously. 

My grandmother.

I agree, there is nothing left.

I hear of children, jobs, petty sickness and begrudged health. I stare at them, but they stare through me. I’m ghostly, mourning already hazing their eyes, clouding their judgement. They blink back tears to bear to touch me, arms like static. They hate it here, sickly smell and floral walls, the clinical glare of impending demise. They hate it. Almost as much as they hate themselves for it. 

Head hung, I feel grass at my feet, open sky and fresh air.

Comforting words and forgotten love a pace behind.

A melody plays, a waltz? G, E♭, D, C…

At last, I know, my body has brought me home.