Gouge

"He swallowed his eyes, and by deficit, became whole".

I felt my buttocks, and for the first time since…i smiled.

As an intermediary for the gods, you are asked not to interfere with decisions, but convince and coerce through dreams. Only the brutally flawed are selected by the gods, handpicked specifically because we know what was before and we all paid a price to transcend.

The Barracks were different. Mirrors are considered sacrilege because it distracts us from what really matters. When you are summoned by the gods to serve as an intermediary between them and their people, you heed the call, do as you’re told and THAT becomes your present, nothing else matters.

“your stretch marks are getting longer, don’t you have any discipline?” My mothers sister said to me, long before i got called upon. And so i would spend hours in front of the mirror, staying there past feeding periods so that i could prevent the growth from the apparent fungi that was my stretch marks.

My mother’s sister would wrestle me awake with words. Taking me places that were designed solely for her, and often i wonder if it had been a method of offloading parts of herself, into me.

I needed to “shed the extra pounds that i had gained” since i had been staying at home, she said. “Maybe fast for half of the day” she insisted. And seeing as i was not sure what the next phase in my life would look like, i had convinced myself that being “home” was the best option.

Waking up at odd hours to run on a trail that was not mine. Eating and avoiding meals that were guaranteed to make my stretch marks vanish. Concoctions and teas that emptied your bowels, gods save you if your intestines did not follow.

For those who believed, it was said that here was a certain kilogram that was allowed through the gates of heaven, anything more disqualified you. And so, the “love” my mothers sister had for me, wanting to see me through the eventual gates of heaven, came at a cost.

I became the house jest, i would return from the trails of another and stand in the mirror until the next. Missing all meals because the gates of heaven were even more important and i could NOT lose sight. But still, there was always something. If not the fungi that crept around my hips, it was the weight of meat that sagged from my chest.

I was ridiculed, that morning i was made a mockery of. The one day i made a choice of mine to stay in bed and have a few hours to myself, it was met with insults upon injury and maybe…that was the catalyst, the extra kilogram that balanced the scale in my favour.

In front of the mirror that guaranteed i missed meals, i washed my hands at the sink, disinfecting with dettol to make sure i made no mistakes. And i started to claw.

I rubbed on those eyes that would be transfixed on the mirror and i clawed at them, in excruciating joy i ravaged at the eyes that did not feel like mine anymore and as the first one squelched in my mouth, i laughed. Mucus from my socket trailing down my nose, tears that no longer had a reservoir rushed through the socket and with no hesitation i clawed at the second eye, with joy i clawed, blood, tears, and mucus trailing from empty sockets, as the slimy residue slithered down my throat.

With no eyes, i would now have to believe the beauty in what i could not see and not the vitriol that others projected into mine.

~

And it came time, under the cover of night, that i was summoned. To the barracks where the intermediaries dwelt. Each with a purpose even more unique from the next. And i answered the call.

My lack of eyes caused me to look and move from within. Others’ lack of ears made it so that the words of strangers did not have any power over what decisions were made in a person’s life.

And there was another, oh she was as frightening as she was enchanting. With no layer of skin to cover the muscles and bones that made her being, it was forced upon you to face the ugliness that is reality and only then would its true self be revealed to those who dare face it.

Through the troubled waters in the dreams of a mother, the burning bungalow in the nightmares of a man or the revolving door that haunts the sleep of a child, i stand by and let them feel what is necessary until they themselves get to their catalyst.

And so my legs, carry me with speed or intention, through the fields. If i so please.

My hands are now of a greater purpose than vanity. Helping lift, congregate and wade through the curtains of another’s reality.

The stomach is just the security needed to guarantee that there would be resources available at all times, even when it does not seem like it.

The tattooed hips have since served a purpose since moving to the barracks. Moving with a rhythm. In a place where we can be free of jest and ridicule, i use those same hands, sinking them slowly into the vat of shea butter and massage the stretch marks that cause commotion wherever i am present.

And fortunately, all I had to trade in for this fulfillment was the one thing that got in my way — for now, my eyes feel from within, where no mirror could ever reach.