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[Text ID: This body of mine is simply not right.

I am ignoring the browser prompting me with the dreaded URL and I am typing out the entire thing anyway. If I refuse to acknowledge what my device already knows then I can pretend my problem doesn’t exist. Meetings held in church basements on the danger of porn addiction have nothing on me.

My brain and skin conspire against me on the daily. Constant rubbing and aching leaves me twitching and red in pain. I can’t wear tight pants anymore, walking has become a class on resilience and one that I am failing. I can’t even leave the house. Not without getting sidetracked in the produce aisle, imagining myself as something akin to a spit pig and the sweet taste that sticks to the top of my tongue.

The “popular in your area” list reads full of itty bitty “step-sisters” and sexy “milfs” that are just dying to be stuffed. I imagine predatory men and confused boys. I imagine them in the same body. The same, no good body. They both lay back on stained sheets and fantasize about killing their mothers, praying that they’ll be caught in the process. 

I am the “barely legal” getting bent over crates of carrots. Shirt hiked up and underwear bunched around my trembling ankles while older men play guessing games with my flesh. I take it and I fake it, and the men are none the wiser.

When I wake, I wake to one hand shoved underneath the covers and the other scribbling feeling across the page. Scratching away about the oozing and aching at all hours of the day, about the way it follows me into my dreams, about the failings of this here body. 

The “recommended for you” reads with gagging and abuse. I tell myself it isn’t my fault, as though suggestions aren’t determined from prior behavior. I tell myself it is okay, so long as I view myself as the tortured and repent for the fact that I get off on it either way. How many times can one ask for forgiveness before it runs out? How many times can one ask to be saved before they give up on ever hearing back?

The man in front of me at the store has one fist wrapped tight around the handle of his basket. He carries himself as though he is looking for a fight. As though someone is itching to give it to him. And I am… itching, that is, as I look at veins crawling along muscled arms. This man could ruin me. I imagine giving him that little push, leaving him unable to help himself. Not because I am all that much to look at, but because I am easy and I am asking for it. I am the shelves groaning underneath our shared weight and the red imprints left behind when it is time for him to check out.