i

Could I just take a peek inside?
What’s the colour of your blood? Could I take its temperature?
Could I examine you inside and out, head to toe, just take my time to figure it all out?

A human, healthy and vital in all physical regards. Radiating with what I could only call temporary immortality. I know I’ll never see it fade in my lifetime…

So won’t you stick around?



I don’t mean to be cruel, it’s just...

How I envy your physical freedom - your need for so little sleep, the way you bounce back after a night out, accidentally missed the bus so you just walk home. What I could do with that kind of power… my body feels so much older than you.



ii

Humiliated and betrayed by this heavy casing I carry, have carried and cared for, and defended from hands with no self control.

How could you do this to me? I thought I loved you well, I thought this transaction was forever. A permanent wrench in the system, what can I do but accept it all and push on?

The alternative...well, it’s not something I can accept.

I didn’t carry you all this way, all the way through childhood recklessness, years of kicks and stances on hardwood floors, basketball games, over oceans, and through forests of trees, all the way to shifts at the diner, at the cafe, or the book factory, and on bicycles through streets (almost ending it), through crowded cities and up countless flights of stairs, all the way, for this.

A physical self-gaslighter, fixing problems which aren’t even there. Talk about the placebo effect - a self-doubting, gaslighting mind, and a body with an attitude to match.

I’m sorry I doubted myself so much - criticised and never gave slack to my mind or my body - convinced there was always something I was doing wrong, never trusting the idea that my instincts could actually be right.

And this all leads me to ask… did I do this to myself?

Here I go again.