diannely antigua
diary entry #30: regression At first, I didn’t seem far from repair. But on a train from Venice, my tears are fat, used like a boat, replaying memories, the 99 stories of abandonment. There are ways to anatomize my grief, the hardest part was getting their bodies down the drain, the ants. Death is the greatest protector. She occurs like Jesus again and again. Sometimes she’s dressed as a French maid, a Mary Magdalene, a poor woman eating a plum. My family liked me better when I was with him, my certain savior. Only a true believer can die from this curse. Only my mind is an underworld. My therapist likes to ask: What are the different ways that you can talk about your father? I have a vision of different spoons falling on him, and I don’t cry. But I’m losing things, I tell her— the half-life of my body, a compressed atom in my head. I’m addicted to the suicidal space, even at weddings. Even in war, we wait for the silent landscape after the bomb.
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