What it means to stop believing in things, Colleen the psychic
says, mostly to herself but I think she means for me to hear it too

as she pulls a pink bottle off her shelf, takes the lid off and
tips it onto her palms. It fills the room like jasmine from a fenceline.

We're having a heatwave but even if we weren't I would be inside.
The room is small and the blinds are drawn. Above the candle

burning is an op shop painting of a ship rolling over high seas.
It's sail is red. The salt lamp glows a golden kind of orange.

What was the thing that happened? She asks. You were fourteen and it hurt the most? Both our palms are pink now, mine from the sweat.

She keeps tipping the bottle, rubbing her hands together and
pulling at the air around me, peeling me back. She's looking

me in my eyes as she points at my belly where the scar is
from the ring I got looped into it that time I was fourth form and

thought it was edgy, when really it’s by far the tackiest thing I've done. It was cool at the time, I remind myself. And sit my jeans higher.

But I don't remember doing it for any kind of cool, those things
have never really motivated me. It was more about making a mark

on my body, a sort of stalking out what is mine. A deciding of things
during a time in life where you feel like you have no decisions. So

after going to TRENDZ where they sold steam punk outfits and pierced people while they played Iron Maiden, I remember

getting back to school and the boy I was dating punching me in the belly and laughing into his roman sandals, Juicy in hand.

And I remember the bell ringing and going to the bathroom
before class because he'd made me bleed through my tartan dress:

the metal loop and fake amethyst in disarray, stretched slightly to one side and weeping red. The bathroom stall smelt of that blue

soap they use in public schools to protect the smell of sanitary pads and cigarettes. And I remember sitting in that stall, my ringbinder

on the floor spilling out notes on The Piano, feeling like there was nothing more lonely in the world than sitting on the upturned seat

of a toilet, bleeding into your hands from something someone did
who was meant to love you in the ways the first person should.

That was the start of things, she says.
And this is the stop.