She hit me again, much more forcefully, and again I recoiled and clenched and bit down on the bedding, and again I waited for transformation. I waited for my skin to fall from me in ribbons and for somebody else to be revealed, but there was only more pain, deeper but somehow even more unremarkable than before, and this time there was also grief that the pain revealed nothing to me, that perhaps there was nothing to be revealed at all.
