asymmetries

Maria Gray, from “Bad Nostalgia”

I sit in my bathtub. One of the toes on my foot is pale white. It stands out from the other raw, fleshy ones. I trace my gaze up my leg, and count three blooming bruises. I can't remember where I got them from. They could've just easily come from banging into tables as my own fists. I bury my face into your shoulder and ask Why I Hate Myself So Much. You just hold me and say 'I don't know.' I accidentally drowned a spider running this bath. I didn't see him. I fished his body out with my fingers and left him on the side. He made me feel squeamish, even though he was dead. I felt bad for feeling squeamish. Today I slept on the sofa instead of doing my work. The smudges of the oil pastels I used that morning came out in my dribble, staining the cushion I rested my head on. I woke up, my mouth feeling black and white.

Do you ever dream about the mountains stitched onto you? Do you ever miss the summers there? Do you ever think about rice paddies and banana leaves? How did it feel to cross the ocean? Were you carried in a bag? Or were you held the whole time? Did you come over in a box, a small coffin? Or did you think of it like a bahay kubo, a little home on stilts? Did you find a place for yourself here? Did the home they brought you to ever feel like home? Or was it an eternal eclipse, like Bakunawa had finally succeeded in swallowing the moon? Do you like to be worn? Do you like to be shown off? How did it feel to be born from the most beautiful brown hands in the world? To have danced underneath the moonlight? To have walked up and down the mountains a hundred times? A thousand? A million? Since time immemorial? Do you ever dream about the mountains stitched onto you? The rice paddies? The banana leaves? How long has it been since you were there? Would you even recognize it now? I hope one day we can return together.

Shelby Asquith, Be gentle going into the heavy night (via exahele)

J.R.R. Tolkien

— Anne Carson, from Red Doc>

Rebecca Lindenberg | Interview in The Believer | March 27 2012