bag against a worn purple couch. I feel fear during the exposure, an agitation that spreads from my gut through my whole body, clouding my eyes, my brain. Stop the feeling says, searching for tangible dangers that are causing this fear, coming up with many. Then the feeling passes and I can see again, the heavy humid streets of Hell’s Kitchen, the diner on the corner, mattresses propped against buildings. The feeling has moved through, nothing bad has happened. People are rolling their suitcases through train stations speckled with blood and urine and then into their bedrooms every day - bad things happen to them, but not because of this. I try to accept that I will not live a life that is free of bad things, not even if I do everything right. According to a study my partner reads to me from his phone while I am half asleep, OCD patterns can actually be seen in the brain on MRIs. A loop, like something stuck. Visible calcification, are the words that stay with me. I think of the dried puss that comes out of my earlobes on the rare occasions that I wear earrings. A warm and sweet unmistakably bodily smell, a crust. I think of these holes punched in my flesh that try and try to make better something that is not a problem, that is in fact intentional. I think of my cells straining to fill some gap, focusing on their failure. Crusted over, calcified, and then the surface broken out so easily. I think of a classmate of mine in college showing a photograph of a gorgeous surreal landscape of rock and glowing light and haze. Another planet? A portal to other worlds? “I think they’re light leaks,” the student says, when we ask what we’re looking at. Exposure and mistake, better than I could have imagined. Nothing bad. What will I lose when I am exposed, I wonder? What do I risk, laying myself bare here? How does the flash of light make the image? I’m not talking about the science, I’m trying to talk about the magic. How can I surrender into my own mortality without losing some sense of self, some sense of deep urgency that defines me? Does the exposure reveal, or is the revelation in the exposure itself? A nude figure in the light of the window, darkness all around. I fear that the neighbors have seen. What do I fear? That they liked seeing my body? That they didn’t? w
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