Hagintha Woods

When I was young, I knew I was an animal.

The problem was, I didn’t know which one. So I resolved to try on a new skin every day. I would be hopping around my house one day, roaring loudly another, or even slinking silently along the corridors, trying to catch a crow unawares.

It wasn’t until I was a little older that my friend proclaimed that if I were an animal, I would be a lynx. That resonated somewhere deep within me, and sounded so right that I took to it with gusto.

I brushed aside my fringe and paraded the two bald spots at the sides of my head as cat ears. The mottled scars I got from climbing trees and running outside were obsidian marks on my glossy yellow coat, and the high arch of my feet made it natural to tiptoe everywhere with a quiet, self-assured grace. My canine teeth were sharp little things, and when I smiled I did so wide enough to flash them all, proud of how they would glint in the light.

When I was startled, I yowled. When I was happy, I purred. When I loved someone, I’d curl up with them and hug them tight.

In such a way, the years went by like an unbroken line of ants, unwaveringly marching on, yet in such a constant monotone that I never truly noticed. Perhaps the change had been a gradual thing, building up slowly, but I only realised when it got to be too much and overpowered my ignorance, the wall that had been unknowingly standing in its’ way. Everything fell apart, as ungracefully as a shattered mirror, and where I had once seen myself smiling was now a plain block of wood.

Suddenly, to everyone, I wasn’t enough anymore.

It started with my appearance. My mother told me to push my hair over my bald spots, slathered me with moisturiser, got me orthopedic soles to manage my high arch. My aunt told me to stop smiling like that, to instead let my upper lip rise gracefully and stop midway, like an olden noblewoman raising a fan to obscure a smile. My sister conferred upon me medications to cure the scars on my limbs, held with two hands like a treasure for my eyes alone.

My father proclaimed me too old to be gambolling around having playfights with my brother, though the other was a decade over and had started it.

I had to rip the pelt of a lynx from my body and stuff it in the closet, leaving bloody sores.

I looked to my parents for the remedy, and they gave me a lecture about “How to grow up”. I was expected to fit in now, praised when I was a perfect foil, reflecting whatever whoever looked at me wanted to see.

To that end, I had to scrub my surface clean. Thoughts that festered and swirled, a feral smile and a savage hunger… I took them all and shoved them into the closet in my quest to regain what was missing, to once again have that nebulous something that made everyone proud of me once more, that allowed me to exist in the world without scrutiny.

But the more I tried, the more removed I felt. Everyone liked reclining in the sofa and chatting, and I much preferred climbing into a tree and dropping leaves at the unsuspecting people below. They were always preoccupied with what ‘others’ would think, whereas my mind was filled with how the grass had smelled fresher that day, or how the bird outside was singing the most beautiful melody. Everyone checked the weather forecast for the weather. I looked at the sky, heard the wind, felt the air. And when it did rain, everyone ran into their houses, and I ran out, spinning and whirling as I felt the drops hit my skin.

The differences were everywhere I looked, but I refused to give up, running into my room every time I spotted a difference. I closed the windows and doors, before tearing those parts of me out to shove them in the closet. Look, tear, shove. Look, tear, shove. Look, tear, shove.

With everyone saying yes, I had to learn not to say no. My chest swelled with the words I held in, my waist grew pinched with all the things I snatched from it, and I bled hurt out of my center, but I fit in.

I learnt how to take joy in the pieces of me that were allowed whilst continually refining myself, like a sculptor determined to perfect the exact curve of a hip. Those small pieces of me, like my joy for learning, still smelled like rain, and if I held unto them tightly enough, I could convince myself that I was still myself.

It was like I was a puzzle piece, but though I was molding my shape to fit in, I was coloured differently, and the only way to truly fit in would be to drown and reinvent myself in paint. Through it all, I looked. I tore. I shoved.

One day, I sat on the floor after a long day, my pieces and parts sprawled in various places with no one to put myself together for. The closet stood at the periphery of my vision, dark and unobtrusive, the container for all the little bits and pieces I’d stowed away. All the shavings and excess.

My mind ran it’s memory over the various things I’d put in there, and a mix of curiosity and wistful sentimentality focused my attention, made the closet loom bigger over my position on the floor.

I pulled all the parts of me together, swathed my body in fabric, and hobbled over, let my fingers dance over the warm wood of the handle.

I pulled.

I fell.

Straightening and hearing my bones creak, snapping into place, I stood, giving the mess before me a famished, savage smile. Stepping out the closet that had been hearth and isolation, cage and protection, I padded forward.

I reached into the pile, and we both shivered as I breached the surface. With a practiced, sensual grace, I dug, gripped what little was left, and tore, relishing the straining sound of ripping flesh.

I tipped my head back, and dropped my prizes into my hungry maw. They slid down my gullet, so small that I hadn’t even needed to bite.

Letting my tongue flick the pointed tips of my canines, I turned around, reached into the closet to pull out my pelt, that glossy gold embossed with ebony.

I brushed off the dust, looked into the mirror, and deeper, to the bottom of my heart, and I didn’t turn away even as I slid the pelt over my shoulders.

I was no stranger to putting myself together from scraps in the darkness, and though it started out as a desperate need for survival, it was now an act of intention, a craft of purpose. I sifted what I wanted to consist of, etched my truth into the very marrow of my bones, layered impulsion into every line of muscle.

But now, it was time to walk into the light.

As I moved toward the closed window, I felt my shoulders and neck stiffen in anticipation, my tail twitching impatiently behind me. The people outside, perhaps those even inside my house, would shake their heads, raise their voice, appeal for me to shrink once more.

But they did not wear my coat. They would never know the precision at which I folded my fur over the planes and eddies of my body, the way I shifted minutely over and over until the fit was exactly right. They would not understand the strength it took to stretch my toes into my paws, push my claws through to secure the pelt to my flesh, a protective barrier against the cold.

A leopard can’t change his spots. A lynx chooses to keep hers.

The fight would come, and I would meet it. But for now, I pushed away the curtains, opened the window. I let the sunlight heat my face, smiled, and took a deep breath.

I hadn’t smelled fresh air for a long time.