Don’t think about me when I’m gone. He commands, as elbows cross to drag the shirt off shoulders. Cotton is translucent at night, but he is the silhouette behind the translucence and he is a sunburnt image inside half-looking eyes. Wind blows moonlight across my barren chest. Coarse palms roll through the landscape of the night.

Yet—I thought of him often. At the first shadows of bloating doubt, inside the blank after “father’s name”. I thought about how scrupulously he leaves no trace—smoothing out the sheets, drawing up the curtains.

They never tell you—no one ever told me—the Pill is actually two separate pills. One for delivery, the other redemption.

First is mifepristone. A minuscule dot encapsulated—carried in expansive plastic. Could it be the pharmaceutical’s smirk?—their way of saying—that whatever you’re getting rid of—it too deserves the dignity—the dignity of excess, of books and crystals, Sunday rituals, flowers and crowns.

Flood runs red with the second pill. Walls, tunnels, scrapes and wholes—out you go—onto the carpet and porcelain floor—where the roommate finds soft legs and tears—and drag them into a bed hastily made.

I knew because there are teary Youtubers—telling a story “a while back”, “some years before”, “a long long time ago”.

Still, I nodded and blandly stood, when the man in white recited his medical book. Still, I smiled when he said it’s early and safe—don’t worry—you’ll recover soon.

I smiled as if I was awarded a golden star, for saving the day, for fixing a broken part. I am not disgraced, not broken, not down and out. As if I never wondered what he’d say, where the fuck he’d gone.

I shuffled through layers of tissues and drenched napkins, in hope for something special for all the pain. A disfigured shadow of what could have been—an emblem for double massacre—an another to testify, to cohabitate—the drilling, the tearing parts apart. Yet between the goo and the dripping peels, all I could find was my body, and my choice.

The sun weighs slyly in the horizon, shooting stealthy shadows into the tiny room—chamber of receding and beckoning pain. I wrap my arms around myself. Cold fingers roll through landscape of dusking grey, mapping a sacred territory where embers blaze.

Writing notes:

It took me a lot of reading over to smooth the rhythm of this “poetic prose” into one that flows somewhat naturally. The tempo I had in mind while writing doesn’t even always get picked up by me when I read it, so I added a lot of signs and punctuations for clarification. Also, I had to find a truce between precision/accuracy and lyrical grace. That was also slightly difficult. I found my self beginning to actually rhyme in the second half, but the more uniform, short pace comes off as almost cheerful, which doesn’t quite harmonize with the content. It was also challenging to adjudicate that.