#bodyastext

Beneath a single, weary bulb, the nurse reads the body like scripture, cradling jars where hearts forget time and eyes remember nothing. Steel glints, syringes whisper, and care lies scattered like prayers that learned too late how to wound. Here healing is no longer mercy but archiving: not saving what lives, only preserving what refuses to be forgotten.

Human skin is the throne of touch and a protective covering for the body’s deeper tissues. To align the physiology of the book with the human body, the cover of the book – its anterior and posterior shell – most readily recalls the binding properties of derma and the epidermis molded atop the papillary layer of the derma with the attendant medial orifice. The derma and epidermis produce the effect of wholeness, they apply material boundaries to the body and they arrest its contents.  Skin holds bodies together; it is the connective tissue that defines the threshold of interior / exterior and it is by opening the skin that we can read what is inside. The critical opening of a book creates functionality; the book does not function without being opened. Skin that is shut restricts our gaze. However, If we open the human body we damage and potentially destroy it. For ourselves, this type of reading is forbidden. Our body as text – with those multiple layers of interpretative possibility – is sealed, contained, hidden, secret. The book requires an invasion, it invites us to fold back its skin.