My Arm Fell Off Today

-My arm fell off today. No special reason, it just did. I was walking across campus and it just fell off. I was feeling like a pillar of salt, looking back at a lost life, almost in tears and it fell off. Maybe that had something to do with it. Fuck! I thought as it bounced off, splotching red on the concrete, and rolling onto the grass. Just what I needed. It was bad enough I was feeling wayward, now I had this thrown into my day as well. Fuck, fuck, fuck!!! I could feel the blood shoot up to my head, that over-flooding invasion as your blood pressure jumps from 0-90 within a matter of nanoseconds. It’s bad enough that in thinking of my college years, I liken my existence to that of Bruce Willis’s character in The Sixth Sense, now, my arm having fallen and driblets of blood sliding down, I become the Pink Elephant in the room. In this case on campus, as people walk by. And I turn red; anger, frustration and silent hysteria.
I look at the arm. I want to kick it, throw it, hide it, yell “it’s not mine”, but I simply reach down with my still attached arm and pick it up. I look at it. I put it back where it’s supposed to go but as soon as I let go, it falls again. This time twisting the small finger at the end and I yelp. Fuck! I could feel the sweat beads form as my anger builds. But I’m stuck. So I dig into my pockets, twisting and contorting as I reach around with the only arm I have left. There is nothing in my pockets that could help me remedy this situation. Nothing. I wince. The twisted little finger still throbbing in pain and the arm still in the grass. Breathe, I tell myself. As I inhale deeply, I catch a glimpse of my shirt’s sleeve. It’s unthreading. And I breathe in again, and again, and I can’t stop until I’m hyperventilating with my eyes closed. That feeling that the world is falling apart comes over me and as I open my eyes I feel dizzy because there’s my fucking arm as proof.
My eyes open again, this time, a sharp pain shooting through my head. I’m staring straight up into the sky and it looks fine. Fucking chicken little and the power of suggestion. I look over at my arm and it’s still there, still in the grass. I notice my sleeve has unthreaded a little more. I’m flushed pale as I get up, but that’s only cause I passed out and if I hadn’t I’d still be a furious red. I’m stuck, I know this. I tug at the sleeve. Maybe I could fix one issue. Usually when you tug at loose threads they come free and your shirt is saved. So I tugged and I tugged again, but in the end all I ended up with was a pile of thread in my hand that was formerly my sleeve. I took a deep breath. I looked at my arm in the grass again. Then again at the sleeve in a pile in my hand. Maybe a negative and a negative really do equal a positive. I wrap the thread around the arm. With one hand it turns out to be quite a feat. Then I begin my walk home. Unfortunately, with each falling step I end with less shirt and with my arm following a little further away from me.