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03 November 2024  •  Creative Writing

Diary Excerpts, July

In the moments after you leave, I inspect myself in the mirror... I look like a girl again.

By Isabel James (she/her)
Content Warning: medical trauma
Diary Excerpts, July

Milk/MRI

I tell the doctor I am dizzy and they lay me down on the plastic

Turn my head to one side

Then the other

Push me until I am dangling over the side with my neck limp

Staring at their shoes upside down

He sits me up and brings a hammer to my knees

Then tells me to push as hard against his fist as I can


I strip myself to nothing and stuff all my things in the little locker they gave me

I put the sunflowers I bought you for Valentine’s Day in there, too. 

Being here reminds me of those two weeks when I was 16 and I thought I was going to die

How the ultrasound technicians kept telling me how young I was

How hard I cried when they did the biopsy


Even though that’s over now

It’s hard to take the memory away: staring at my face in the mirror, thinking it hollow and purple

Hours spent in waiting rooms with the elderly

Strangers touching my breast with cold gloved hands. 


I always feel sad when they lay me down on the bed and tell me not to move 

They cover my eyes and plug my ears

Put a pillow beneath my knees

But I can still feel the machine shake

They give me a button to hold in my sweating, clamped-shut hand 

To press if I get scared

Mum told me to count backwards from one thousand


I imagine you seeing me in here

A sick, gowned body or like I’m only 10,

Covered with a blanket and waiting for a cup of jelly to make it all worth it

Peppa Pig on the TV, no sound, 

Waking up from the anaesthetic in a wheelchair without my parents, unsure when they were told to leave the room


It's so loud and I am terrified

Still, like an animal pretending to be dead

But I can’t find the will to push my finger down and press it


I fall asleep in a room full of cameras

As they watch and try to find the spot where the energy is leaking out

Glue in my hair and wires hooked into me everywhere

A tube in my nose to pick up the moments in the night

When I struggle for breath

Awaking to the girl across the hall

Telling the nurse she’s cold

In a voice that sounds like she is crying

I can’t turn my head or move my face

Without something dislodging:

Unattached from where they plugged me in


The tests show nothing and the doctors say things like: 

Vestibular

Neuralgia

Tinnitus

Neuritis

I don’t know what that means.


The words remind me of hysteria

Women trying to break out of the walls of their skull


Sitting there motionless while they speak I tunnel inwards and feel all expression go from my face

Remembering when I was a child and my mum did all the talking for me

Staring at the instructions on the wall for sharps disposal

And the tiny words on the cupboard doors: gloves, collection jars, spare needles Made from the handheld label printers I used to play with in my parents’ office when I went with them to work


I used to be scared of needles

And would grip Mum’s hand desperately whenever I got put to sleep 

But now I fantasise about one being slowly submerged into the skin

Where my brow meets the bridge of my nose

And in the gums above my top molars 

Injecting something cool

Or so warm I can't feel the throbbing in my bones anymore 


Like when I put my head back in the bath

And let the water lap over me

Until I can’t feel the difference in temperature 

Between the liquid and my insides

And wonder if I have melted down

Into soft residue on the porcelain 


I daydream about pulling out my teeth

Like a child hungry for pocket money

Tying them to the door handle and slamming it shut to force out the roots

So I can look in the holes they leave

And find what has been eating me

The thing the scans and antibiotics and fingers in my mouth can’t find


There’s a moment after you undress me 

Where I frantically rifle through my bedside drawer, trying not to rattle the bottles of painkillers 

When the sick escapes into plain sight 

And I can’t pretend anymore that it's not in the room with us 

No matter how much I can smile and joke and fuck


So long as I am lying down.


Sometimes I feel that if I am anything

It is the milk left over

Liquid squeezed between shaking fingers

And the dry, unwanted mass of my body

Sitting curled in the palm of your hand



Moss (Poem for a Friend)

In the moments after you leave, I inspect myself in the mirror:

The downward turn of my smile

The origami fold of my spine

And the places where my skin concaves, the valleys between my bones

I look like a girl again.


You appear in as many of my dreams as I remember

so that nowadays when I sleep your presence washes over me

and I always wake with a vague feeling that I have left you behind somewhere

Walking together through a train station,

holding hands so as not to lose each other in the crowd.


I wake in the night and find you still closely knit to me:

Your cheek to my sternum, something between a sigh and a word

which I would love to decipher

hummed into my skin


I wait for your hands to pass over my shoulder

and push away what covers the surface

Until it’s only me

sitting cross-legged opposite you

And yet I press my elbows together and grip at either side of my neck

I cross my arms over my body


What a strange and gentle thing,

To be kissed by someone you grew up with.


It’s like I knew you in the memory of another life

And I find myself now possessed by an impatient curiosity

about the parts of you still concealed

the places I know I can’t yet touch

your eyes looking up at something I can’t see


I stroke your arm and you shiver

Touch me back

and I am electrified

Like an animal

frozen in the light but for the obvious beating of its heart.


You told me once, with sincere disbelief

that my hands were so warm

You asked me why

But I don’t know where the warmth in me comes from.


It’s funny,

Feeling everything come to the surface

like green moss crawling

out from beneath strained fingers

And suddenly you fill a space I had kept guarded

So easily – like its sole purpose was to house you.


I have become a collection of letters

with no name

But all of which are addressed to you

And I feel now

that I am always looking through your eyes


I would let you wash me clean

I’d let you untie the ribbon

I love it when you kiss my fingers

In everything I listen to, I search for a sound you would like

or that could make you understand


How dearly I want you

to look at me and feel the way I do

When I stroke your hair, kiss your ear and press the tip of my nose against your cheek

And quietly realise as soon as the thought appears,

I would be there as soon as you ask for me


More than that I wish you knew

That I am afraid to be looked at

without my shell

But I will unravel the first layer for you

So you can see what lies beneath.



Check out more of Isabel’s writing on her Substack.

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