Daily Exorcises

 She tells me that when the workouts get hard, she pushes through it, to which I’m like, “yeah, but what does that even mean?” to which she’s like “I just keep going even when I can’t” and I don’t get it, but I imagine her, after fifty-two burpees, grabbing the trash and burying her head in the can and pulling a muscle that runs from her neck and all the way down her back from the way the vomit shoots projectile up her throat and out her mouth like a pressure washer, only to pick up where she left off and go for fifty-three.

And even though I know this is probably not what happens, I imagine her gritting her teeth together until blood seeps through her gums, grinning at me through mountain climbers, then moving into squats, and her head would spin and spin – slowly at first, muscles crunching and ligaments snapping, whatever bone that is crunching in a twisted, uneven, pulverizing break, until her head is spinning faster, faster like a spinning top and I just see blurs and flashes of her face – crescent-moon shaped, dagger-sharp.

And at some point she would say, “don’t you want to stay? Won’t you miss it here? Don’t you love me? Did you ever love me?” to which I would answer “no, sometimes, no, I used to” to which she would respond, “Figures.”

And I don’t know how, but the whole thing would end with me apologizing to her: “I’m sorry this happened to you, I’m sorry you’re hurting” even though she did the happening and the hurting. And she would puke on my shoes and laugh, probably. And I would claw at my own chest the way I do when I’m scared and tell her I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I miss you.

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Steff Sirois is a writer from Connecticut whose work is oftentimes inspired by her experiences in the service industry, gender, and “womanliness” - whatever that is. She is an MFA candidate in fiction at University of Idaho and the current fiction editor for Fugue.