first I will hate myself and then they will accept themself
Somewhere, an accidental savant nailed three layers of blankets onto all of his windows to try to quell his mind; I cover the only window in my apartment with two blankets. I’m feeling desperate. I want to not hear the rain outside. Last week, I read a poem by Diana Khoi Nguyen that said: There is a house in me. It is empty. I empty it.
So I begin to empty the house in me. I open the front door of my body—slowly, because it’s 2:33 a.m. and cells are sleeping, or being happy, or transmitting data, or whatever—and start throwing things out. First, I reach into my mouth and pull out my wisdom teeth—hidden in the unused basement of my body.
Never any wise words from you anyway! I say, my mouth a bloody lollipop.
Next, I reach for the hair on my arms. I start with the left, using my dominant right hand to pull out cellophane-esque scraps of hair; I remember reading somewhere that eagles sometimes pluck out all of their feathers, smash their beaks and talons, all in the hope that they will reconfigure themselves. I start to pull faster. Faster. Until my arms are naked and red like Jupiter’s steady storm.
I wait a minute. Nothing happens.
I close my eyes tightly. I think about how much I have said I in reference to myself during the past 21 years; there is so much arrogance in I, how it draws attention to itself and never allows me to break out of myself. I reach into my body’s kitchen—the brain—and throw out the I so there is no me, no myself, never more any I, only they.
They sit there, invisible in their dark apartment. They explore themself: their now void body. The hallways of their synapses fire with a missing so deep, they swear that for a moment, every single cell in their body lies still and conjures tears cleaner than the rain outside. They think about Galileo, how he said that the sun was the center of the solar system, how he was persecuted for it and placed on house arrest for the rest of his life. They wonder if Galileo felt detached—confined to a single home, his mind and the cosmos—a second home—his only escape.
They think about their slippery mind. They think about why they won’t call their beloved—how they know they won’t/can’t/shan't ever love them. They decide to make themselves the center of their own universe where there are no questions—like, why don’t you love me?—never any answers—like, it’s complicated—because if they know themselves, what else will there ever be to know?