Idol, Burning

by Rin Usami

I still felt the burden of my involuntary role as a mammal dragging me down. In the same way that a night of sleep put wrinkles in a bedsheet, just being alive took a toll. To talk to someone you had to move the flesh on your face. You bathed to get rid of the grime that built up on your skin and clipped your nails because they kept growing. I exhausted myself trying to achieve the bare minimum, but it had never been enough. My will and my body would always disengage before I got there.

It was the reverse of that saying “Hate the monk, hate his robes.” If you fell in love with the monk, even the frays in his robe became loveable. I thought that was pretty normal.

People never thought I was trying to do things right. They usually just said I was lazy.

I hated that I was crying. I was resentful at my body for dragging me down, for making me cry.

Why couldn’t I live normally? Manage to do the bare minimum needed to be human? I never meant to break things, make a mess of them. I tried to live, but things just kept piling up like the waste from my own body. I tried to live and my home collapsed around me.