Toubib Or Not To Be

I worry that I used to have more interesting thoughts. It is a strange thing to grieve, isn’t it? Not a person, not a place, not even a life I once had, but the quality of my own mind. The way I used to look at the world, the thoughts that kept me awake, taking me places I could never quite explain to anyone else.  I worry that I am becoming stupid, boring, predictable, that somewhere between the things I have to do and the things I consume to forget about them, I have become a little less myself. I have become nothing more than the contents of my own consumption, a mind full of borrowed thoughts and recycled opinions, mistaken for the familiarity of depth. I wonder how many of my beliefs are truly mine, how much of my personality I have grown into and how much I have merely absorbed. Sometimes I notice a new opinion taking shape in me and cannot tell whether it came from somewhere deep within or from having heard it often enough to make it feel like my own. I wonder if I am discov...

I want to be emaciated, not of flesh but of need. My hands are so cold. I keep wondering if they will ever learn warmth, as if warmth were something earned, something the body could retain. Everywhere you touch me, my skin ignites. Flames, sudden and violent, as if I mistake burning for salvation. I confuse your warmth with interest, with care, with something that belongs to me. But it doesn’t. It never did. It is warmth I borrow, pressed briefly against my chest before it fades. Intimacy gives the illusion of belonging. It tells me I am held when I am only close. Each kiss feels like survival, like I’m siphoning life from your mouth to nourish what’s starving in me. When it fails, when nothing inside me wakes up, I kiss you again, believing insistence might become resurrection. You touch me and the desire to disappear loosens. This is easier than repairing what’s broken. For a moment, the void quiets. For a moment, I hate myself less. When our fingers intertwine, I want you endlessly....

Je me regarde dans un éclat de miroir, un morceau suffisant pour contenir tout ce que je suis devenue. Le visage derrière le verre a la constance d’un fruit trop mûr : une douceur qui menace de s'effondrer. Il cligne à peine, battre des cils est déjà une ambition. Il n’y a pas d’effroi. Seulement cette neutralité anormale qui suit les choses qui cessent de brûler. Les émotions n’arrivent plus jusqu’à moi ; elles trébuchent à l’entrée, s’excusent puis repartent. Alors je m’imite. Je fais semblant d’être la femme dont le visage me ressemble. Je note, chaque jour, une étrange évaporation : des souvenirs qui se désagrègent comme du sucre dans de l’eau tiède, des jours qui coulent à travers mes doigts sans même mouiller la peau. Je pourrais croire que je rêve en continu, si le rêve n’avait pas plus de cohérence. Rien de tragique là-dedans. Juste un glissement imperceptible, presque poli, vers un terrain où je ne fais que constater. Un terrain où mes propres mains me saluent avec la rés...