break up song

By Claire Dooley

In early January of this year, my ex-girlfriend Maggie challenged me not to refer to myself for six months. I had become self-obsessed, Maggie said. Addicted, almost. She’d catch me staring at myself during our video calls, eyes only for my own face. 

I thought that was normal. I wanted to look my best for her. To be presentable. 

No, Maggie said. It was more than that, something understated but sinister. She’d walk into the kitchen after waking and see me staring down at my hands. I’d tilt them left to right, extending and contracting my fingers, admiring the way my tendons flickered in movement, the way my skin mottled in the morning cold. I would become so distracted by them that I’d overcooked the eggs. The house was filled with the stench of burning protein and all our pans were ruined, even though she told me again and again to turn the stove off. She said I couldn’t focus on her for long enough to listen. That every conversation led back to me. I was the beginning, middle, and end of things. A roadblock. A circle. A snake mouth-fucking itself with its own tail.

Once, she walked in on me masturbating to a picture of myself. It was just porn, I told her. She didn’t have her glasses on, and I looked like a lot of people in pornography. She just shook her head and asked me what colour her eyes were. I didn’t have an answer. She started to cry, all wet and messy. 

I think she just thought I liked my face more than I liked her face. I think everyone has this dirty little secret: that they love to play the victim. Still, I had to take Maggie up on the challenge. There was nothing better to do. Nowhere better to go. It was too cold outside, and I’m very competitive, you know. It’s one of my worst traits. And I would never admit it to her, but I was curious. I wanted to see who I was outside of all my vanity, out there on the edge of myself. 

The first thing I did was post to Instagram to let them know I wouldn’t be as technologically present. I used a meme of Sisyphus and his rock. Potentially pointless, but no more self-talk. Did you know that there are earthquakes on the moon? I thought that expressed my point well. 

January dragged its feet onwards and conversations around the apartment dwindled almost to nothing. Maggie said she felt awkward sharing anything with me when all I did was spout facts back to her. Did you know that the only letter not on the periodic table is J? and that the furry bits inside of a cat’s ear are called “ear furnishings”? and that Elvis was originally blond? I had subscribed to a daily fun fact newsletter, but not many of the facts were actually any fun. 

February came like a beaten dog and something strange started to happen. My mind had become a deep pool of water, so deep that the bottom was unreachable. I started losing things: all of the sixth grade, the first time I had sex, my mother’s maiden name, how to spell lugubrious. And odder still: the fingerprint on my left pinky disappeared, replaced by a blank expanse of flesh. 

Maggie said it was all in my head, even when I showed her my finger. With victory tearing at her voice, she said, finally, it was getting to me. I had to admit it now. I shook my head like I was shaking water out of my ears and responded, The crust of the earth is proportionally ten times thinner than an eggshell. It’s important to know your place in the world of things. She wouldn’t look me in the eyes while she went to pack her things. I heard the front door slam later that night from where I sat watching Jeopardy in the living room. I answered every question right.

The next morning, when I went to cook breakfast, the frying pan was gone. The entire yolk of an egg is one large cell, I said out loud to no one, and admired my reflection in the glass of the oven door. The ache of waking up in a lonely bed receded. I no longer remembered who I had to miss. 

The days grew oddly warm. Nubs of leaves began to nose into existence on the tree outside the living room window. I played games of chess against myself that I could never finish. By then, my fingers had receded to the second joint. My right ear was gone too. All that was left was a dark, mysterious hole. I passed hours reclined on the couch as I watched the sun rise and fall and the leaves uncurl on the branches outside, cut through with power lines. 

Things began disappearing more quickly. I knew my birthday was sometime in March, but I couldn’t remember which day, or how old I was turning. I forgot the name of the city I grew up in and the city I lived in then. I still liked to look in the mirror, but I struggled to recognise myself. I seemed alien, removed. It was like looking at a painting in a museum of someone long dead. I was unknowable, locked in history. Beautiful and horrible at the same time. 

Next I was more negative space than anything else. I lacked the context of feeling. My legs tapered off mid-thigh and my arms disappeared just past my shoulders. I could not remember anything before the morning of the day I was in, or imagine anything beyond its night.

At the beginning of April, someone called me. The voice sounded like a kaleidoscope at the end of the telephone. It said, hello? hello? I could only mumble out of the side of my mouth that was left. Who’s there? I said. Maggie, answered the voice. It asked me how I was. Momentary, I responded, means lasting for a short time; brief. The voice sighed like ice cracking. You’re still playing, aren’t you? Oh, Mia, it said. I don’t know what you’re talking about, I replied, wincing, and hung up. 

Outside the world had begun to crack too as the sky pounded down wetness. Fresh green leaves hung heavy on each branch. I took a bath that afternoon, weak light filtering through the window. Mia. The name pinged through my mind like a flame thrown in darkness. It seemed like a name I was used to knowing. I tipped my chin into the water and looked down, saw what was left of my torso, my winged hips, the lump of my pubis. I was standing on the edge of me now, I realised. I gazed out at my strange horizons.