Cursed Bread

by Sophie Mackintosh

But then what, when there was nothing left of the bread to improve? What then. Eat of it and be filled. Eat of it and be transformed. Eat of it and nothing changes. The almost-imperceptible recalibration of our desire, our satisfaction. Try again.

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.

because sometimes we return to what we recognize, whether we want it or not.

I thought to myself how the worst I had done really was not any of the little betrayals but in murdering my marriage with familiarity, and it was unfair because that is only what marriage demands, the careful establishing of familiarity in order to be able to live your life the next day and the next and the next.

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.

But sometimes I just want to be witnessed.

Nobody, at the beginning, believes they will debase themselves for love. Nobody believes in anything else but joy.

the fear of my memories losing their power is always battling with the fear of the totality of memory making my life unbearable, so I have to mend and refigure with what’s available, I have to do it while I still can.

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.

You can witness the unthinkable, you can have the unthinkable done to you, and at some indeterminate point in the future you can still be happy, even if just for a fixed moment, a little ball of satisfaction in the chest—isn’t that incredible? Even blood washes out, or you can fill your mouth with things that hide the taste of it.

In the last months I have reconsidered my body and look, see, it can still hold its power. It’s still good, puckering flesh and all.

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.

the possibility of transformation, that destruction which can feel a lot like peace when it comes, was in me all along.

and isn’t that what we are searching for when we debase ourselves for love, one moment of certainty in this strange and beautiful world.