winter parentheses

Winter gave me a rash that looks like parentheses around my heart.

The body speaks in code when the season turns. A symmetrical winter rash flaring up along the margins of the chest, near the armpits, seems less dermatological than cartographic. The skin traces something out, sketching a mirrored arc where the armour thins.

The rash breaking out in symmetry suggests a kind of somatic declaration: that the inner world is being pressed too close to the surface, but still not quite seen. The skin dries in winter, as if to say: “You have been made brittle by something you cannot quite hold.” A rash adjacent to vulnerability flanks the centre like sentinels worn out by exposure. The mirrored rash is uncanny, as if an energetic imbalance is seeking re-alignment. The off-centredness of this bizarre rash seems an embodied reaction to holding something emotionally taut—as if an interior is trying to re-establish symmetry by flaring up through the skin. The rash surfaces the act of unconsciously bracing—shielding a soft underlayer while withholding. As if to say: pick one. You either guard or you glow.

In Chinese medicine, the lungs open into the skin. Winter is lung season—grief season. Winter rashes, as the lore goes, often signal suppressed grief, especially if not openly acknowledged. The heart parentheses are tied to the lung meridian, which runs from the chest through the inside of the arm. Nothing is random about rash placement in this tradition. The system may be processing unexpressed sorrow, or preparing to exhale something unspoken. Parts of the body are inflamed from restraint: for the things we don’t say aloud, the qualifiers, the soft disclaimers. Something vital is trying to speak, but it’s still being buffered, bracketed, edited out.

Parentheses are for asides (teehee). They are for the things we don’t say aloud. What feeling, what truth, what ache or desire is still being kept in the margins? Almost like a footnote in flesh. In place of exposure, the heart opted for stealth.

How do we treat a rash? A cream would be a good place to start, but as I reached for one, I was reminded of a friend from the tropics who would instead opt for tiger balm in such a situation. Tiger balm! A totally perverse treatment. But what’s more perverse is that I understand the impulse. The tiger balm scratches the itch. Sometimes that’s more important than fixing the wound. Haven’t we all done that at some point? Making the burn worse is the whole appeal. You hope there’s healing at the end, but sometimes the palliative is what’s available. There’s honesty in the mechanism of the tiger balm: it doesn’t pretend to heal. It just burns—loudly, theatrically, as if to say: look, I’m doing something. That sting becomes a stand-in for care, a flare signal to yourself. The body longs to be met halfway, even if it’s with menthol and bravado.