My fingers slide over the steel silver of the pen. I feel nothing—not even the weight from the cylinder of black ink. I can see my hands, I can see my legs, but only in pieces. When I look at others, I see whole people, beautiful forms with identities.
The mirror reflects only dissected limbs and a face blank with impossible hope.
I start with the scraping.
I want to take apart the body, piece by piece, and find the source of the rot. I want to peel back the skin like the paint on the wall, searching for the pristine white they promised me. I scrape at the imperfections—the memories of hands that weren’t mine, the scars that refuse to fade—trying to find the “clean” underneath.
But the scraping isn’t enough. The stains go deeper than the surface.
So I begin to dismantle. I unbolt the joints and unspool the nerves, laying the parts out on the cold floor like a machine that never worked. I am looking for the glitch. I am looking for the person I was supposed to be before the world broke the mold.
Will they be clean enough to put back together? Or am I just a collection of ruined parts, waiting for a light that is too white to ever let me be whole again? A light meant to be dimmed.
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