In my bag, amongst what you might consider a pile of junk, there were two tickets from the opera rolled into straws. I unrolled one. And one of the letters of the word « O P E R A » sprawled in deep black ink accidentally dripped from the slightly stiff paper onto the pulp of my right middle finger.
The drop of ink was a tiny leech-like bug. Clinging to my finger harder and harder. The microscopic claws relaxed for a few seconds before digging deeper into my skin. The pain, at first intermittent, was now a steady throb. The strange insect seeped its way into my body. It disappeared beneath the surface of my finger’s skin. An indistinct black shape you would have never guessed spelled the letter A not so long ago. The whole thing happened in four or five frames, like an Instagram carousel post chronicling the short life of a drop of dark blood born from a
needle’s prick at the tip of a finger, in reverse.
Produced by error?
I thought to myself what does A stand for? Perhaps A as in antelope
antidote
amor fati
My skin does not fail to protect me from the world at all times.
It is the soft grip that holds it all together, or so I presume.
After the incident, I wear large red sunglasses to hide my bruises.
I suppose small wild ink leeches much like glitches serve to correct the machine, and allow bodies like mine to extract themselves from its fateful violence.
The way my skin digests form is nothing short of magic!
Give my pores
an entire alphabet to collide into
and I will find the words to tell you
how far I reach when I slip
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