I cannot stop dying. I go in and out of the coffin; I attend my own funeral so often that all my clothes smell like flowers. I always want to go where the butcher works. To stand very straight right where he kills the pig. I open my eyes wide and open my mouth; with every cut my legs weep and I die from the pain that fear leaves behind.
Then I come back again. I swear I will not return, but I always end up at night walking toward the slaughterhouse. As if they didn’t hurt the cats to see if they scream like their cousins the pigs, as if in this dark place I didn’t know well that they attack the soft animals.
I do not know how to descend to the earth to face the fear that we might go together (my body and I) to inhabit a place less foul-smelling, to forget the crying, to wait for another boat and tear the wallpaper from the walls of a house that never became our home because we were swimming while the dishes piled up and filled with worms. Love was slipping away from us.
It is my turn to be my own slaughterhouse. I have come to beat the sadness off myself, to reduce life to a rounded whisper, until I have nothing left but a heartbeat, a breeze, a deep sigh so that later I can fill everything with silence.
I do not know how to wash dishes, but I can tear the flesh from myself and bury myself in the earth to be reborn, and hope that the pigs have not died of cold when my first leaves can cover their bodies.
To swear on my knees to the Virgin of the Frozen Currents that I will not return to the bad habits of drifting away from myself, drowned in a dirty puddle; that I will not step into the slaughterhouse again.
To die and be reborn as the zodiac dictates. To build among spirits and imaginaries. To pray, begging the clean and fresh water to teach me how to live with my body, in case this is the last life I have. To wake from this long, lethargic dream, from the drug of floating in filthy water, and live bravely wherever the icy tide may go, in case this is the last chance I have to be born again in the middle of this cold river. To rise and search for myself in the timeless waters, to carry myself always until I inhabit my body, to look the monster in the face and rescue myself from myself.
To feel with my hands, to manage to wake without wanting to die, to teach myself to play and to make love with my belly wet after washing the dishes, fully awake beneath a river of cold water.
Photography by Eliza Trejo // Dev/Scan at Fotograma Film Lab
