My
body began above my
breasts, which had first appeared
when I was eight. It continued below my knees. The center of my body was
numb and
ambiguous.
In the
bath, I perched
paperbacks above my cleavage, grew tired of the
lukewarm water, then
rinsed off blindly without
touching the skin. Feeling a growing
warmth one evening, I looked down and found
blood eking from my ambiguous center, eddying a surprisingly
blue-veined body. I rinsed myself as the pink water
drained from the tub. As I dried off, I searched the
towel and my body for evidence of blood,
rubbing my skin red.
My grip on
human anatomy was still loose. When I was eight, my mother had
called me ominously into her bedroom to explain
ovaries and
fallopian tubes and to warn me of
the apparition of blood. She remained curiously silent about the purpose of
menstruation, and by the time I had begun to bleed, she was already
gone again.
Now,
with this blood, my body was
betraying me. Though I tried, I could no longer deny
my body’s existence. The
dead center of me wasn’t only bloody; it was suddenly flooded with
varied sensations, none of which I could bear. Worse than the pain was
the unnamable sense of desire. Against my will, the body wanted
to be touched. And
I would rather be dead than touched.
I resisted
the idea of killing my body. I commanded myself
not to think it, but ways
to kill and
be killed flickered, unbeckoned, through my mind.
Hit by a car. Slit throat. Gun to head. Hanged. Electrocuted. I
witnessed them, disconnected from my own desires. The knife was never in
my hand; I only saw a hand, a knife.
Instead of the
instigator, I became the
prophet of my own death. I didn’t want to kill myself; I wanted to solve
the mystery of my impending,
inevitable murder.
from The Book of Revelation
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