The Radiated Body

Have you ever listened to our people speak?  They talk of pain with such soul-shaking normalization.  They speak of migraines, of being incapable of standing or opening their eyes, for fear of muscle spasms in their wilting brains.  Hence they are inactive for hours. 

But hark! there is a cure, a small, wafer-like pill which dissolves upon the tongue, but after taking part in this anaesthetic communion the sufferer must allow for five hours of fatigue.

Life hurts, by nature, it harms, existence wounds, survival injures, survival damages.  In general, persevering upon this coil does tend to ache a bit.  But we require no justification for this pain, small white blobs of salvation are so readily available that we do not question why life comes with the necessary element of pain.  Be that pain a serrated edge hard upon our guts (which leave us dangling our left shoe on one cold finger), or a mute but persistent spider scratching our eardrum.

We are born broken, and happily so.  We bond over pain, those who share ailments discuss them as tennis partners would ruminate over last weekend’s game. 

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I cannot stop these muscles spasms, scorching and dense with tension – poreless, sweatless – retaining all heat – temperature increase –dangerous levels.  Microwaves cook from the inside.  My brain is butter, keeps its pretty cauliflower shape but runs slick down the knife when you break its crust. 

Radiation morphs my tissue, I cannot feels it but my child can, her home is growing hotter, it bends her body this way and that.  Her shoulders extend forward.  Her slight and delicate angel wings are left detached and compensate by following the path of the spine.  CO2 fills her small frame and her flooded lungs learn to adapt.

I give birth to a cockroach, and cry for joy, for she will survive.