by A. Herrold
Dead Upon Arrival
Tell me, what’s it like to fuck a living corpse?
That’s something you would know, I guess
To enter something warm, limp, and lifeless
Did you prop the body up and make it do silly poses?
Was this necrophilia meets Weekend At Bernie's?
I bet you thought manipulating bodies would be a lot easier without the head
Much less funny though
I wonder, how did you strip the body?
Did it feel like a parent undressing their slumbering child for bed?
Was the whole body stripped or was this more of a Winnie-the-Pooh situation?
Bottoms off was all that was required
You see, I wasn’t there
So I can only imagine what transpired
A wake of greasy faced college men
Number unknown
Baseball caps, basketball shorts, hockey pucks for brains
Did you form a ritual circle around the body?
Or was it more of a conga line straight to the vagina?
No, it was a kettle of vultures
Swarming in on a helpless gazelle that had been drugged unconscious
Was the body still warm when you tore into it?
Fresh and ripe for the pillaging
Were there wet slurping sounds?
Or was that drowned out by your mates heckling
I bet it was nice to not have to feign competence
For once you didn’t have to demonstrate that you didn’t know where to find the clit
That you had no idea how to pleasure anyone other than yourself
Did blood stain your latex when the body tore?
You probably didn’t realize how fragile a flesh cavern is
Was it hard to wiggle inside something so dry and clamped shut?
Like a hermit crab trying to squeeze into too small of a shell
Or trying to crawl inside the carcass of a freshly slaughtered fawn
Did you stop to wonder that this is why nature invented the warm up?
That maybe what was transpiring was a crime against nature
Or did you treat the dryness like a waiting dinner party invitation?
Bring your own gravy
Chew it up, mash it a bit
It will loosen soon enough
Maybe it wasn’t about the corpse at all
It was a performance piece
A bromance mating ritual
A contest to see who can most creatively commit a war crime
It’s nice that you kept up with old traditions
Wrapping the body in a flimsy sheet
Like it was already on the coroner's table
Like it was already prepped to be buried in the ground
Who's idea was it to move the body?
So that it wouldn’t be discovered at the scene of the crime
Who’s idea was it to complete the metaphor and toss the body in an alley?
Next to the trash and recycling bins?
And by the body,
I mean my body
Here is what I remember,
Searing, blinding, almost mind numbing pain
A type of cold that goes beyond your bones and enters your brain
Human teeth marks on my thigh
A trophy mark carved into my flesh
A warning, a reminder
Whore
It was not a simple act of cruelty
Not mundane or impersonal
This was sabotage
This was mortal combat dressed as self-gratification
Still I have hope for you
I don’t dole out death sentences easily
Not like you, apparently
How easy was it to forget there was a human inside?
That this person cooked you meals and laughed at your aimless jokes?
Did you never stop to reflect that you once held this body when it was a baby?
That you had upon a time played Barbies and G.I. Joes with them in the backyard?
We once played dress-up-tea-party
You once told me I was annoying for trying to copy your every move
All my childhood I wanted to be invited into your boy’s club
Let me tell you, this was not how I wanted to be included
Your mother had me tutor you in reading comprehension
Comprehend this; you were five whole grades ahead of me
Was that the last time you valued me for more than my vagina?
When did my main characteristic stop being smart and start being pretty?
Maybe I should have tutored you in empathy
You see, where you negated the human
I installed one
I make men out of monsters
My mind can see beyond the cruelty into the shriveled heart that still beats
What you don’t understand is it’s a privilege to call me pretty
No one gets to do that unless I stamp your wrist
Invite you into the club
What you didn’t understand is that this body
My body
Pulsates, vibrates, rockets life like a force
Do you know what it is like to make love?
To and with someone?
A love filled with yearning and creativity?
To hold someone and have them hold you back?
I do
I know that sex is more than genital battle bots
But sex wasn’t really your goal, was it?
Do you know why you had such easy access?
Did you realize that when I didn’t cry out it is because I already knew
No one is coming
No one will protect me
I am alone
You had to have known I was dead long before you sank your claws into the body
My body
You see, there is no world in which I was not dead upon arrival
That my own body didn’t serve as my coffin
I had died so many times before that existence felt like an afterlife
You can’t fuck a corpse that is living if it is already dead
You knew, you had to have known
When you hunted me relentlessly
That I was easy prey
I hadn’t known that I could run
I hadn’t known other monsters hunted at night
I had already been conditioned to normalize the abnormal
In order to survive I learned to sacrifice myself
My upbringing doubled as my burial ground
Before my foot even crossed the threshold you were pushing boundaries
I mistook manipulation for kindness
Intent did not align with content
Your moves were deliberate and calculated in your attempt to divest me of all I was worth
No wonder your lot are called predators
Maybe I got it backwards, it was a dead . . . wait what is the opposite of corpse?
I wish you could be like the others
The ones that can barely look at me
That you would realize that your shame is a shred of dignity
That what was done can never be undone
Part of me is grateful for my mind severing itself from my body
My body has kept a record of every barbaric interaction
It is a nuclear wasteland of unbearable sensation
A home that I never got to inhabit
Descartes didn’t have to make me a dualist
Life did it for me
I envy the hermit crab
When he transforms he gets a new shell
My transformation is the agonizing pain of coming back to life
Coming back into a home that was demolished and having to rebuild inch by torturous inch
So, tell me
What is it like to fuck a living corpse?
And I will tell you what it is like to survive being raped by monstrous men
A Letter to A Loved One Lost
We were young and fragile
Although I thought we were wisened and pansophical
An honest mistake when working with the short end of experience
Witness me hugging my knees, attempting to shroud my inner world
You swaying over, low to the gound, simian
“You don’t need to smile all the time”- a careful kindness
The notion that I have been unwrapped, my shroud a sham for concealed turmoil blown off
There was the time I had texted, “I want to die”
Your response, thunder to my lightning bolt
“Fuck you”
Because I had done this before
I wish I knew then what I know now
That neither of us harbored an understanding of trauma
But we were children
We did our best
What I had meant was,
“I want to disappear, I think the world is indifferent to my existence and would be better off without me, please tell me I’m wrong,”
I wanted to matter to the one that matter most to me
Now I know how to decipher trauma, my own personal codex
Witness us standing on a dark dance floor
“I love you” whispered after barely a week of knowing me
Tears make their escape through my eyes
Panic filling every corner of your face
If I could go back I would cup your thin jaw with my hand
Tell you, “Love has been weilded as a weapon against me, to be loved comes at a cost that is usually too pricey to pay-”
“I don’t think I know this love you speak of-there is a portion of me that doesn’t believe in it, and an even greater portion of me that does-this is what terrifies me the most because then it can be lost”
Instead I simply responded, fighting back biting tears, “I love you too”
I think we saved each other, in our own messy imperfect ways
You are a part of me, like the pavement in Rome
Someone laid those bricks, ages ago
Overtime the shops have changed and the people crossing daily are unaware, yet the bricklayer remains the same
Witness two teenagers engaged in the game of risk called Love
Bold enough to scale a shop building so that they might star gaze
Cold cheeks pressed together, hands interlaced, necks bent back and eyes filled with future
This is where I leave them, filled with pride at the adults they will become and brimming with gratitude for the risk mutually taken