You try to wash your hands of them; free yourself from the lists. But they keep your life within neat, well-defined limits: controllable. Every action is timetabled, ordered in your head, laid out in advance. It stops you slipping up, losing the plot, so...you swallow pills, wash your hands, bleach floors, check windows, lock the door. You mustn't get sidetracked, check doors again, lock the window, bleach floors, wash your hands again, and again and again till the skin crumbles and your blood runs free into the clear water.

[More:]

When, or if, your hands heal, the coarsened skin shines like the polished glaze of your white porcelain cups – perfect, pristine; like sunlight on your bleached cream tiles or the windows that smell of disinfectant; like the stainless steel tap reflecting cracks of the kitchen and your own perspective; like the seamless flow of purity into the sink – transparent, clean; like the bar of wet soap rubbed round and round until it bubbles and foams; like the eyes of your lover watching you wash again and again and again, like...

Stop it! Stick to your proper list, you fool! Don't let other thoughts in or doubt will take hold and start to make its own lists of single items repeated again and again and again. No, ignore the shadows that dirty your wall, the itch of something staining your spotless hands. Chant your list like a mantra: sacred and unquestionable. Wash your hands once, dry them once, swallow your pills once, switch off the lights once, check the doors once, shut the windows...Keep following your list till it's time to start over again. Don't look back, don't stop to wonder, deviate, divine the life that's lost in the lists that keep you alive, that stop you listing and sinking.

16 November, 2007

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