10.03.23 at 10:06am: has the body horror gotten old yet?
the hollow feeling is fantastically heavy, like a cave with aching walls.
It's so hard to resist slipping towards empty space, towards a vacuum that gives rise to patterns I cannot name and refuse to share with anyone.
Bodies rise with the water till their heads hit the ceiling.
they did not ask to be alive...
And yet, here I am, and there are things that
I wish you would beg of me to tell you.
I wish the words would leap out of my chest.
in silent moments, i'm cradled by desperation, and
in company, I carry it with me.
i. sitting in the booth, I've got my elbows on the table and my feet dangling off the floor. I feel like such a kid, I want to cry. "I'm feeling melancholic." Melancholy is an understatement - I'm on a highway in the desert, blinded by the sun, squinting through the dashboard at the rest of my life. it's bleak, i'm carsick, and i want to turn around.
ii. next, i'm gazing into the sky, and i see two people in a car - a different car - and i'm right there in the passenger seat. I turn to the driver, and a sentence starts to form. "YOU AND ME BARRELLING UP NORTH..."
of all the things I never got to say, somehow this one sticks out the most.
I can't make sense of it no matter how hard I try, but I constantly find myself drifting back towards past highs and destructive behaviors. I feel like no one's listening. I just wish I could become un-marked.
iii. I'm always dreaming that disaster strikes! even though the water trickles in and lifts their bodies so slowly, I can't help but anticipate a climactic, marvelous implosion. how could all this tension lead to such a slow and silent death? I look around as they creep slower towards the top, and I'm filled with dread at the realization that no one out there is watching.
After the booth, and the car, and the bodies in the room filled up with water, I'm looking again for the world I thought I carved out. As I'm chasing the end of that string, I find that all of my hunches were true. Outside your eyes, men do not mark me. I don't need cleansing - don't try to pity me or think I need saving. And when I undress my past, don't paint girlhood in shame: my body isn't yours to reclaim.