NEGATIVE SPACE
…
when you see a “weed” spiraling up between a concrete fault line, do you ask yourself a question. the same question i have while smoothing aloe vera over my overheated cheeks in the summertime: “Why are you here? You, specifically.”
if i could dig a shovel into that crack, free the roots and worms, and repave the streets with the preserved soil i would surely find my answer.
…
a thirty dollar serum infused with Jeju Island green tea used to feel like the pinnacle of indulgence and physical luxury. it cooled and smoothed my bumpy inflamed skin that i’d relentlessly pick, punishing my grease-filled pores.
it was already hard enough to look at me.
the way my grandmother would wince when she looked at her cherub-cheeked baby that was suddenly changing. the dark blemishes marked her own aging, and signified all the impurity brewing within me too. it was the way her lips would snap back into a neutral line just as quickly as they contorted in repulsion when she remembered i was still her family. this was a catalyst for my obsession with bodilessness.
…
a feeling that seemed exclusive to cinema and animation could be achieved here, if i connect my headspace, to my heartspace. my heartspace to my core, and to my womb.
sitting on the sofa, my body liquified and melted into the gaps between brown leather cushions. the sofa was a space in my home that already defied materiality, my stepdad’s hard-earned credit score and consequent Rent-A-Center purchase, etched with a permanent marker by a child who should have been allowed to make more mistakes. the wrath directed at my little sister is a prime example why i am always seeking escape. to breach systems and cycles ingrained into DNA.
this knack for disappearing is generational.
i can choose to call the butt groove in my grandfather’s itchy blue armchair a “depression”. i can choose to be welcomed by its warmth, or disturbed by the energy, still lingering. i can choose to see meaning in every frayed thread, to feel the presence of its ghosts, or i can choose to see an armchair. Granddad chooses to let everything too complicated seep into the foam filling, dozing off to The Temptations.
if the body is an avatar, if life is played like a game, damage can be transmuted into power-ups. the trauma stored in my hips can be caught within my breath and released through my lips. pain will be indestructible still, but mutable.