People | Bodies

Watching Home Movies After My Double Mastectomy

Inside her small body lives every answer to every obstacle. No maps are necessary. She is the map.

con

.

Before this was ever known to be the color of a video ending, it was the color of a calm blue sea.

*

baby

1992

Beauty and the Beast.

*

My body is a container I am stuck in.

It chains me here. Where it is anchored, I must be too.

Photo of author and mother

*

My body is a map of crimson roads.

Where do they lead?

is

I am fiction.

It is with the spine that we divide the animal kingdom in two: vertebrate and invertebrate.

It is with the spine as metaphor that we divide the strong from the weak.

Artwork courtesy of author

Sometimes when I think about measuring my relationship to nonfiction, I think about this:

I am your possible future. At least let this suffering be purposeful. At least let this horror help you to save yourself.

*

My body aches for lost breasts today; it will ache for lost ovaries tomorrow. This is how I relinquish myself: bit by bit, part by part.

Author and brother in costumes

.”and

Greece

Look at these nuts we’ve made, Look at these two little people with countless little worlds inside of them.