cutting

The thoughts of hurting herself were so tightly crammed in her head that she felt weighted down, top heavy. She had cut herself on the edge of some elegant stationary when she was 13 and it scared her to see how quickly she opened up. Like an invisible seam ripped open and raw. For a moment she was able to focus on that only on that wound and it was a great relief to her. It was if she was stuck at the top of the ferris wheel, suspended, not moving up or down, just there in the air. Rosemary never did it again at least not with paper she didn't. She sewed a swiss army knife into the nylon lining of her favorite coat and fondled it through the worn corduroy when she got nervous or scared. It was like her emergency exit, her secret way out if life finally completely failed her. Even when the coat had frayed and split, grown tight under her armpits and short at her wrists she refused to give it up, refused to give it to her mother for rags. They fought about it so many times that finally at 16 she had taken the coat and gently floated it down the river, never to see it again. She tore the knife out before she lowered the coat into the water, just in case it was ever found by anyone who could say it was hers.