Bear Hug

In Cameroon, drinking Bailey’s makes you guilty of gay sex.

Seriously, not making this up.

Fuck. It’s ironic how empty I am because 

I swear 6 months ago I had the universe inside

of me but I cried the rivers in my bones dry.

The volcanoes in my chest erupted when you told

me you didn’t love me anymore and lava flooded

my body and hardened till I stopped sleeping.

I had stars in my lungs but I burned them

all out with the cigarettes I was smoking

to get you the fuck out of my throat. The

flowers growing at the bottoms of my

stomach are dead. Apparently you  

can’t water flowers with vodka.

I had the sky in my veins but it’s

been pretty fucking stormy since I

ripped them open. I had planets 

on the tip of my tongue but

the debris from the shattered 

remains of “us” have been

crashing into them. I was

everything. And then I met

you and we were everything.

Now you’re fucking some

blonde girl who gets

high all the time and

I’m a fucking

“This piece was primarily a trust exercise, in which she told viewers she would not move for six hours no matter what they did to her.  She placed 72 objects one could use in pleasing or destructive ways, ranging from flowers and a feather boa to a knife and a loaded pistol, on a table near her and invited the viewers to use them on her however they wanted. 

Initially, Abramović said, viewers were peaceful and timid, but it escalated to violence quickly.  “The experience I learned was that … if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed… I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.”

This piece revealed something terrible about humanity, similar to what Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment or Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiment, both of which also proved how readily people will harm one another under unusual circumstances.”