The text, page 143, provided a bio-chemical explanation that reduced

the way my stomach felt like knots whenever I saw him

to a streamline of synapses crackling across neural pathways in my brain.

I cracked one of my antidepressants in half; powder spilled all over my desk

and I applied enough pressure to the MAOIs to create a diamond.

I saw a radiologist and I demanded he provide me an MRI; he promised me that nothing was wrong.

No! I proclaimed. You have no real schooling then! Call in the neurologist!

When I was seven, I threw up on a rollercoaster because of an excess release of adrenaline and norepinephrine that made me feel lightheaded and I ate a cone full of funnel cake just before.

Presently, it feels like my ribs are going to crack and my heart is pounding against my sternum

and my liver is gonna slip right under the thick muscle in my abdomen.

And just when it felt like I was going into cardiac arrest -- I looked at him.

I suddenly felt stupid for knowing the first two-hundred digits of pi.

I felt like a fool for keeping my heart plugged into an electrical socket,

because I tripped over the wire when I saw him and my heart rate is still over 100 beats per minute.

The Pingtang telescope has a rose lense.

Stars don’t seem like suns blowing up and igniting budding solar systems into oblivion.

They look like constellations.

And nothing is simply zeroes and ones.

01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111

01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001

01101111 01110101 00101110

My copy of Jane Eyre would stop rotting.

The creases in the spine would be ironed out.

The black ink will flow out of my eyes; stramp the letters back on the pages and unravel all the words.

When I move my neck to my shoulder, to crack the joint,

everything intelligible will come out like sour milk from the forefront of my brain.

Then, I’ll feel like the ditzy bunny I’m supposed to be.

I will stare at my empty plate and the bile will churn in my stomach.

It will burn a hole in my esophagus, it will sting as it climbs up the walls of my throat.

I would un-chew my food; it will reform into bits onto my forked tongue

and spat back out onto a clean, shiny spoon.

I will rub cold cream all over my lips and rinse the red lipstick off my fingertips

and underneath I’ll uncover the baby pink mouth that I spoke with in elementary school.

The lips that told my father how much I loved him.

The lips that were smooth and un-blistered.

My tongue wouldn’t lick every single lie I told. I’ll shove a bar of soap into my mouth and

exterminate anything terrible that was stuck between my teeth.

Instead of a pull, I will push him right off me.

All the wrinkles will smooth in my sheets and my chenille bunnies will not be knocked to the ground.

My bruises would dart from yellow, green, blue, purple, and gone,

We’d button our shirts back up and put our socks back on our feet.

My knuckles will be soft again and she’ll hold me in arms.

She’ll lather baby shampoo into my hair and wash out all the dye,

bleach, and chemicals that ruined my curly hair.

All of the product would flow back up the drain and solidify;

we’ll bottle it up and set it in the far corner of the medicine cabinet.

I’ll put on blue gloves and rubber boots that reach my pelvis to

dig through a decade worth of garbage in a landfill to find the floral wallpaper that bordered my room.

I’ll take a toothpick and scrape off grey paint,

to uncover a satin pink mess.

I’ll run my hands through the shags in my carpet to rip out the dirt from other people’s shoes.

And I’ll be an adult pretty soon.

I’ll be alone in a city and the best love I was ever experienced

was one that only exists in paperback.

I’ll eat nearly expired sushi from the second-best grocery store in the city.

All of my fruits and vegetables are a little bit rotten.

I cannot manage to cover the hyperpigmentation on my cheeks

and the acne scars on my chin.

I barely put on lipstick anymore because everytime I eat oily, fast food it dissolves my makeup.

I’ll answer a text.

Then, I’ll lay in bed with someone I am not in love with at all.

He has Taco Bell crumbs in his pillowcase.

I will carefully slip out of his off-white sheets and scramble for the front door.

I have been built in my entirety by other people. My mother cut me from a soft cloth with sharp shears and she pulled me taut. She sewed me in her backroom. She stitched my lips into a soft smile. She buttoned up a dress on me. I was built entirely by other people. The stains on the fabric of my neck are brusies from my teenage years spent in the backseat of a SUV. The purple kisses on my neck became permanent. My skin was so tight that his teeth pierced me and his fingers stained me. I was built by my mother. My skin was so fragile. I was built by other people and wrecked by other people. He shattered me.

Although I am the product of a thousand different hands, an exchanging of over a million words, and the consequence of a reaction to my every action-- I am still everything that I own. I have been given nothing besides the ability to be. To think. This mind is the only thing that has been ever given to me. For someday, the stitches that sew my skin together will rot into the Earth and my thoughts are uncompromised to the earthworms eating my flesh.

In my mind, there is a backroom. For Montaigne, he had a back shop to be alone in. He had four walls to be himself. I have nothing material that I own similar to such a space. I have a mind. I have no corners in my mind. I have a backroom far into my conscience. If you weave through the maze of my mind, there is a place at the end of a dimly lit hallway. This place exists in the deepest folds of my cortex. A little workroom, with boxes and baggage that is purely weighed down by emotion. I exist here alone. I kick sawdust around the shop floor. I can make the walls any color, but they are industrial grey. There is a heavy lock on the door and I own the only unique key.

I have laid my soul on a table in the center of my workroom. I have strapped the shoulders and hips of my being onto this station. This is where I mend my heart. I crack open my own ribs. The cleveage is calcualted, clean, and barbaric. I will not allow myself to break my bones into bits that are so small they could be mistaken for sawdust. Sometiems, when I sweep, I don't even check the rubbish I throw into the incinerator. Also, the breaking into my own heart is a very precise pursuit because of the vulnerability of my being. I cannot allow other parts of me to leak out. My heart comes out in a clean swipe; it fits in my hand like a raw piece of meat. I pin the edges to the table with thin needles. The veins and tissue are like veins in the wings of a butterfly. I use a cotton swab to carve black tar from the crevices. In all the bits where my muscles begin to separate, I take a very thick yarn and a darning needle to sew myself back together.

I escape into this fantastical scene. I am a surgeon of my own conscience. But, this is the place where I can truly be alone. Where I can be naked to my own reflection. The loneliness of this back shop is comforting. When I first entered my back shop, it was horrifying. It was tucked into the darkest part of my mind. It appeared to be wedged between loneliness and despair. However, it was a whole separate entity. It was an intersection of solitude and acceptance. It is a place that is a distorted reflection of my own fear and tributlation to better myself. Rather than the ugly distorted pile of muscle, it is a way to sew myself back together. The back room has an odd comfort. The wood paneling is an encompassing reminder of my connection to nature. The feeling that my atoms makeup the same dust that makes up a tree. Dim lights invite me into darkness. A darkness that is ever present. One day I will die. The unlit corners will engulf me whole. They are not malicious. It is part of the deal I have made with the stars: if I live, I must also die. A lamp burns. It burns fat from my own body. I pretend I harpooned myself like a whale; I harvested my blubber to fuel my workshop. I am the beast I pulled out of the water. I sailed for months to muster up the courage to shoot myself in the chest. I have killed myself to be alive again. I am alone and I am so warm. I am alone here. There are no windows. It is so far inside me that no one can find the door to knock. But, I know the route out. I know the dimly lit path from the door to space just behind my eye sockets. I can come back from my backroom anytime I please.

The first time I saw my backroom, I fell into it. At the start of the New Year, I threw confetti in the air and I looked at my boyfriend and I realized I could not endure him any longer. When I closed my eyes to kiss him, I fell backwards into my mind. I touched the doorknob to my backroom. I opened my eyes by 12:00:16. I began to feel my body decay from the facade of being in love with him. The makeup started to melt off my face. My bones looked hollow. Every time he touched me the bruises reappeared underneath my skin. For the past two years, my attachment was insecure. I hated myself, but convinced myself that I deeply loved him. My workshop cluttered with cobwebs. It was untouched. My heart beat fast enough to power a water wheel. My stomach always hurt. I allowed myself to become passive to abuse. It was sometimes physical, mostly emotional. Heavily emotional and mental. I could endure the other things. My body was not his, but I let him creep into my mind. For a long time, I wasn’t myself. There was no light in the back of my eyes. When I looked in the mirror, I felt like I was a plaster shell of who I used to be. I was cracking.

All of my emotional energy was expelled by pretending that I was okay. I try to be untouchable. I want to be stoic. I wanted to be nothing to myself and everything to him. I had given myself up entirely for him to be afraid of losing me. I wanted to be untouchable. I tried to be untouchable to him, but he crawled into me like a spider. His eggs hatched inside me and consumed me from the inside out. When I left him, he still existed inside of me. I didn’t get rid of him completely. I distracted myself. I indulged. I indulged in a lot. I was a portrait of decay, engulfed in hedonistic pursuits. I kept smearing concealer on the bags under my eyes. I kept adding more glitter to my eye lids. My eyelids sparkled like the disco ball in the disgusting club I ended up in. My eyes were dead. I let people run through me like I was disposable. Like holograms of true connection. They passed through my body and right out the door. I watched them leave like pixelated projections of profound touch.

I came home and I had to be alone. The fuel in my car was obsolete. The world was boarded up. I felt oddly Socratic. I climbed up the stairs in my spinal cord and I entered my mind. So, I took off my makeup. I took off my party dress. And I stumbled like a drunken fool through the dark paths into my back shop. I had to peel off my skin and hang it up to dry. I had to detangle my hair. I had to let all the scabs on my lips heal. I shivered naked in my back shop.

The hardest part was coughing up the spider eggs. I knew I stopped seeing him weeks ago, but he still controlled the darkest part of me. I started to swallow stars. I started to come to conclusions about myself as a citizen of the universe. Being vulnerable is hard. Being vulnerable to myself was harder. I am my worst critic. I went on and on, unrestrained in opinion, regurgitating the same shit he convinced me of myself. He made me think I was incredibly stupid. He belittled all of my academic achievements. I would cry so hard that I would throw up. I would be barefoot on the bathroom floor, with a flushed face and in my most vulnerable state of mind, and he always said he was hard on me because he was protecting me.

I was not honest with myself for a long time, so I wasn’t being honest with the people I loved either. I kept it a secret. I would look at my parents and they were so confused as to what I have become. I just didn’t laugh the same. My smile was held up by pins. My back shop was alone. I must heal alone and be in solitude, but being alone does not require loneliness. I told my mother, who made me to be strong, that I had ruined her work. I was falling apart. I let him pull the stitches out of my elbows. He snipped the thread in my knees and left me weak in the middle of descrution. I told her I was sorry. I cried so hard that I flooded my workshop.

One day, in my workshop, I was engulfed in my practice. I was busy. My fingers were quickly weaving and working through my flesh. I was blowing the plaque out of the arteries in my heart, simultaneously, my feet were peddling the mechanics of the sewing machine. I was seaming my face back together. I french pressed my eyelids with a new satin fabric and put new glass marbles in my eyes. I was working with every single bit of my extremities. I went to take a drink of water. I accidentally drank a vial of the galaxy. The stars slipped into my throat, it glittered in my bloodstream, every spider was exterminated, and there was, for a second, the same light in my eyes that can be seen on star from a hundred galaxies away.