Photograph by Aoi Kotsuhiroi

An excerpt…

The syringe needle plunged  into  my  arm with a strange warmth, the heavy liquid slid under my skin  without saying  anything.  It  will  make  its  way through  my  body,  it will  take care to  repair  my melancholy.

The nurse had this look of satisfaction of someone who is absolutely right. She  was exercising her right to dominate my emotions, crying was forbidden. My  mother  was  one  of those psychiatric nurses. I thought she was empty of humanity,  she  maintained  schemas like a soldier, one had to obey  her,  doing  “this”  meant  that  one was like “that”.  She Inflicted a relationship of domination not to lose control. She had lost my father. He was gone  long  before my birth.  Thus man was guilty. And I was the witness to this story.

I could only breathe in the escape,  it  was  the  only  place where  I could  grow.  My mother continues to  heal  others’ injuries, her daughter is gone a long time ago, she sees her as something stranger to herself, nothing has ever existed. I had this body and I put my life on a scale, too heavy memories  to carry and this  product  in my body that spreads its lie,  a sort of suffocation of the memory. I was sitting in the hallway, reading pages of boredom.  Faces moved  and  looked  for  intersections  to cross.  I watched this  flashing emergency exit, where was the danger?

I kept these dead birds on my shoulder,  my body was a branch. I saw  death as a pile of sand,  a  dialogue  of dust.  Around  my mouth  I kept these dusts from you, I looked down at  my  legs  covered  with white and it  seemed to me that all this  nudity was harmless. I was suspended  to  nothing,  I lived in  that hallway,  sitting  on that waiting chair, its body and  mine discussed, I touched its scars  let by pain and distress, they refused to yield, still healing like a new skin that grows after a winter of sleep.

This hallway of medical caresses reeked  of death, I  couldn’t  stay there, waiting for a nurse to pick me up like a bulky package, a kind of  waste  that  can  not be  recycled. My emotional reactions  were outside  the norm, it was preferable to say nothing,  remain smooth and  smile stupidly.

I could go at the end of the hallway and come back, I had eight  minutes to  make that  distance, to  move in  this time, eight minutes  where I should not breathe, walking like a kind of tightrope story, moving  this way  to take  out of me words that I didn’t know, words  that had robbed me what I was.

It was  an opening  of the  mouth ceremony, a backward walk that opened  on cold dreams.

I was cold in this hallway, sat I re-built white sheets, folds of  scents searched  for a twilight like  an awakening to the envy. I was double up with  seams, and my leg became tattooed with a sky of birds.

I waited, I had to arrange my things, first  I would put  appearances on one side and then shadows  on  the  other.  Afterwards  I’d  decide if I take shadows or appearances.   I think that shadows are lighter  for the journey and that appearances are superficial  anyway.  I didn’t want too much things,  just few details  that I  would  put in my bag,  a kind of transportable reality to feed shadows.

I stood there and  rubbed  my  hands against each other  to find a sound that can get  me  out. A  sound of passage  that would open that  door. Why  didn’t  he  come  to see me?  He had to worry now not to find me, I should tell  him that I was  there,  that I  had kept  the  keys  in  my mouth.

I  had  to  wipe  my sex,  I had  this  feeling  it  was crying, I  tightened my  thighs  to hold back its tears, I spoke to it gently.  For some  time  it was  crying like a flowing melancholy. Things were going away.

I missed the cherry blossoms.

I wanted to  put  flowers onto uncertainty,

hanging flowers of uncertainty on every moments that I loved.

Thus, in this perfume, I would hold a kind of scents tree, a tree

that could continue to grow in this uncertainty.

I stroked  my lips  swollen  with pain,  the  night opened like a wound, I had to leave.  Everything collapsed  in  that chaos, the noise  of  the  storm  became  an  animal screaming its  anger. I had lost teeth in the gravels, I was looking for them and found a dream tooth. I put gloves and I sewed a stone on my sex. It was a stone of sex, a stone  to  grow  roots, I had to  tie it well, to  sew it well so it can grow on me.

I couldn’t remember my name.

Flesh, my flesh,

I went to vomit,

I vomited the wear and tear of nameless things, pieces of wounded

flesh, impressions of lies, circles of end.

I still breathed, more slowly than usual, but I breathed.

My bed was no longer white.

I had cut earthworms and made a sort of mixture.

I was like a mistake,

a wild animal without feathers, with different lifetimes.

At night, I wrote pieces of stories when the sky is gone,

with this memory of impressions, the reason out.

There was chaos in the Sacred.

There were these words,

nothing but words that I hadn’t said,

abandoned silhouettes,

wet horses,

stains of soiled lives,

and wait for wait.

Withered clouds went round in circles,

they prepared their departure.

I didn’t want to be there anymore,

with this feeling of spending my life in this bed.

I closed my eyes to watch the rain waking up,

handfuls of earth in each hand to hold oblivion.

Women dragged their shopping trolleys to be the first, the first to say, with their mouths dirty of mediocrity: “I was there”.

I watched them pass, like trolleys of meat, their spits of lives hooked to themselves, they no longer felt anything.

I turned my back,

I waited for the noise of the things  to go  away.

I went to pick flowers to clean the  life,

horizons of flowers without affiliations to cover the wounded river,

these icy waters that no longer dream.

The rain seeped into my body, it was invisible, but it was there,

like a necessary functioning.

Drops of water from the time, lost dusts,

a shadow that I connected to my memory,

a dream that I put aside not to get it dirty.

This couple, order and disorder, is a balance with which I dance.

Dogs dug tunnels,

pockets of silence that they brought back up to the surface.

They held chaos in their mouths, something confused that couldn’t find its place.

A high wall of skulls heated by the sun reflected our digestive obligations.

Rotting in a tepid bed because it’s forbidden to be cannibal, it’s not done.

So stay lying down, it’s still necessary to rot a little more…

I was sitting in the car seat for several miles and I was waking up slowly.

I wasn’t cold, it was raining a little and the road was quiet.

Aoi. Fall 2012.