Cursed Bread

by Sophie Mackintosh

I didn’t know that he would become something to me and that that something would change with time, would grow dearer and then less dear, less strange and then more so, the memory of the old affections jostling for space with the new hurts, incredible, recriminatory.

The trick is forgetting for one moment and then forgetting for another moment and then look, the moments run together like a string of beads, and there is heartbreak in the forgetting of heartbreak, in the forgetting of pain, which returns bright and pulsing regardless of the seconds it has been put aside. Do not leave me here, it tells you. Pain becomes an animal, walking at your side. Pain becomes a home you can carry with you.

Transformation is a membrane-fragile magic, easily disturbed by a breath.

One hand drew its nails lightly over her palm as if divining a future.

To love someone else forever and bend them to your will, or bend to theirs. How do you decide who does which?

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.

Maybe I will forget this on purpose, or maybe I will remember it for the rest of my days.

It’s hard to tell what an image will come to mean, what a person will mean, when you are still seeing it for the first time, and some things you always see as if for the first time.

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. I didn’t understand that for a long time, but I know it now, here, in my little room by the sea where the truth comes to me in waves, as the pieces fall with determination into place.