Cursed Bread

by Sophie Mackintosh

I can admit that in those days I was sometimes jealous of the dough my husband put his hands into, worked so tenderly and tirelessly with, up to the elbows. I can admit now that his bread really was the best. There was such beauty in breaking it open hot from the oven and the steam pouring out, in feeling your appetite worrying at you and knowing it would soon be sated, the astonishing fact that, living as we did in this new time of peace and plenty, we might never have to feel truly hungry again.

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.

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.

I have always been a sort of archivist, glutting myself on what has been left behind.

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.

His hands worked smoothly and unthinkingly, he was unreadable, which maybe meant he was happy, that he wanted for nothing. And this made it worse, the idea that he wanted for nothing, and it was just me who was alone with my desire like a ragged hole in my chest. Watching him made me want him, watching him as another might see him, with his good strong arms and his hands that patted, shaped, stretched, his hands everywhere and easy, his hands not on me.

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.

Do you lay bread on your tongue and think of me, Violet, do you swallow it like a sacrament, do you still get down on your knees?

HOLY FUUUUUUUUUCK

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.

This is what I reach through sex, these days—forgetting you through inhabiting you, something approaching obliteration.

On every windswept corner I willed wonder to arrive but everything I saw reminded me that I was only watching and not experiencing, everything seemed flat and disconnected,

And so, in this place that belongs to nobody, with somebody that did not belong to me, my body was touched with curiosity and with care.

We don’t want to seem ugly to ourselves and even less so to those we care for, but I do believe there is an involuntary intimacy in doing the worst possible thing to somebody you love, the exquisite, weightless feeling of pulling out one of the little pins in my stomach and sliding it carefully back in.

when we debase ourselves for love, one moment of certainty in this strange and beautiful world.