Cursed Bread

by Sophie Mackintosh

I am a woman talking to you all of the time, wanting to feed words back to you, because you gave me so many, pushed them down my throat until I choked and enjoyed the choking, until the words spread through my blood, until I lit up.

like wut but also yes

I’ve been looked at in pity and in fear and I’ve learned that the only way to really be seen is through desire. To be looked at and found whole. Found alive. Please look at me. I promise you that I am here.

I memorized him there, making my own image of the two of us alone in the daylight, the long brown expanse of his limbs, suddenly white at the ankle, at mid-thigh. Not a step-by-step archiving, the way I used to with you, Violet—obsessive remembering driven by the fear of forgetting, the fear of missing some crucial clue—but holding one moment lightly, like this, with the curtains moving. One frame, bordered by dark. I already knew that I would never see him again.

What I am trying to tell you, I think, is that I have been the most myself in these moments of shame, drawn inexorably down into myself, everything in my body in alignment. What I am trying to tell you is that when you finally get your face into the dirt, it can feel like a relief. I know it wasn’t like that for you. Shame was another dress you tried on, discarded, lavish in your waste, a curiosity to be played at. It meant nothing to you.

😮‍💨