The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter (2019)
The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter (2019)
Part I
I picture her mouth with duct tape over it, the sky widening with calmness above my head in the bright new silence (658).
I roll out of bed to go to the bathroom. A shock shoots through my veins when I find blood between my legs, a pool of it freshly staining my white cotton underwear. It’s a burgundy mark, scented like the Meat Quarry.
I run to my mother’s room.
“I’m bleeding,” I say, gesturing between the legs, mortified.
“We don’t have time for this,” my mother says.
She pushes a thick wad of cotton at me.
“Figure it out,” she says. “And you better watch out. Things are going to start changing for you now.”
In the bathroom, I mop the blood between my legs. I shove the cotton in the hole where I think it should go (817).
THAT NIGHT, I BLEED THROUGH THE cotton and through my clothes. I wake drenched in the wetness of my own blood, the white of the mattress ruined.
DAYS LATER, JARRED KISSES ME IN THE empty hallway between classes. He presses his face hard against mine.
“I think I like you,” he says.
His mouth tastes like salt and metal. I touch his hair and it is like touching a holy monument. I go quiet from the glow of it. Below, I am still bleeding, red, redder, reddest, bleeding and kissing (846).
Part II
EACH MORNING, I YANK THE STRAY HAIRS from my face, brush my teeth, apply my makeup.
Then I put on the costume for work: Black pants, white blouse, green cardigan, low-heeled black shoes.
Before I leave, I put in my false heart, which sits in front of my regular heart. The false heart is made of thin red plastic and covers my real heart, quiets the beating, an extra protection.
I walk slowly to the office. I have a short daydream about my body back home, in bed, in the warmth and sheets. The vision washes over me like a drug, what a pleasant pleasure just to imagine it (1209).
I picture love: They must be next to each other in bed. They must be feeding each other small cakes. They are definitely fucking constantly. They must be warm (1266).
VISION
I don’t ask for much at home. It is silent there. I light three candles, then I stare at the walls while the hours pass.
On the walls, I keep a calendar. Here, I monitor my emotional states. Today, for instance, I write down EVACUATED because I don’t feel myself in my body. Instead, I feel like a glistening container waiting to be filled with an event or a love. Each morning in the mirror, I chant the phrase, “I am someone waiting for something to happen.”
Sometimes, I play a record. Sometimes, I read a book.
Within the pages of the book are photographs of craters in the earth taken from space. Often, the craters look like scars on the human skin of land. When a crater hits earth, debris is released which can pollute the air, or even block the sun. It is important to learn one fact each day to keep the mind sharp.
Always, I am standing outside of myself while I watch my other self complete these tasks. I report back with updates: We are eating chicken. We are sharpening our minds. We are expanding our skill sets. One day, someone will happen upon us and love us genuinely and truly for these motions (1292).
They’re all going to die one day, my heart calls again.
I PICTURE IT: THREE TOMBSTONES, THREE times my head over the casket, three perfectly still faces in repose, three times the hollow sound of soil hitting casket.
“What’s wrong?” my mother asks.
I can’t speak, my chest is paralyzed, my lungs won’t make air.
“I know you hate coming home,” she says. “I know you can’t stand it.”
My mouth is stuck open, pained, the terrifying future stuck in my head, chiseled into the gray matter of my brain.
“It isn’t that,” I say finally.
“Just admit that you hate us and you don’t want to be here,” she says, slamming down her fork.
My throat is so full of love and sorrow that no more words come out. I can’t breathe and I know nothing, looking into the heart of the future, the relentless oncoming of death (1610).
VISION
I take Jarred out into the throat fields because I need something to strangle.
“It’ll be five dollars per,” a man in overalls calls to us and I pay.
“It’s been a long week at work,” I explain.
“I don’t understand,” Jarred says.
Discomfort blares off his skin in the sun. This is his first time, and I want it to be tender.
In the field around us, bare necks reach toward the sun, short stalks of flesh, the raw edges of the throats blooming the color of old blood at the center.
How did he see me before this? Poised with the right hair. Now, I am disheveled, wearing filthy sweats, bags under eyes.
Lately, the fury has been keeping me up. My anger boils under my skin at work, beneath the fluorescent lights of the office. All I have ever wanted is a soft place. At night, I dream of rooms filled with feathers or cotton which will keep us both safe.
“You don’t feel the same anymore, do you?” I ask out in the throat fields.
I can feel his ebbs and flows instantly. I know when he is turning from me in the slightest way, as if the face of a flower toward a second sun, or a planet drifting from its stationary orbit.
“Remember the good days?” I ask. “You loved me once.”
He looks carved as stone: No words, just that straight face.
“Say something,” I say. The necks keep their stance.
The silence is bigger than suns, it is the silence of distant galaxies. The universe begins to crumble. The rage roars truck-like through my blood.
I throw myself to my knees in the field. I grab a good neck, a thick neck. I look up at him with my mania. The rage multiplies and I wrap fingers around the flesh.
“SAY SOMETHING,” I scream.
I clench hard, good around the throat. I squeeze until my fingers want to break. The skin caves in beneath, which feels good, a nasty satisfaction. I strangle harder, until I go dizzy from lack of oxygen, until my rage deflates.
I pant on the ground before him, my weakening fingers loosening around the skin. He stands in the field, still silent. I stare up at his throat which is long and thick, glinting in the light like a golden coin.
This is how love begins to end (1647).
A torrent of images fills my brain: My cold body sleeping alone, similar to death, my aimless hours. I want to sob when I think about the loneliness of my life, my days like unvisited graves. My eyes fill (1770).
VISION
The dark loneliness which has been hibernating in my ribs becomes a thick onyx slab that presses down over me.
It takes all of my strength to reach beyond the weight of the slab to pick up the phone. I manage to do it, then I dial the number.
“Thanks for calling Stranger Sleep. How can we help you?”
“I’d like to request a visit.”
“Would you like the same as your last order?”
“Yes, please.”
“Fifty dollars will be charged to your account. He should be there in ten minutes.”
I lean back against the pillow and the next nine minutes stretch black desert miserable, but I face it, I face it head on, I lie beneath the black rock and let it hurt, let it crush the ribs a bit.
When the doorbell rings, I struggle out from under it. I open the door, and he steps into the yellow foyer. He is tall and handsome. I avoid his eyes. Now the loneliness is a large black cube resting in my stomach: square, blunt.
“Hi there,” he says.
“Hello.”
I move down the hallway and he follows.
It is strange to see him in my bedroom, a rare creature in a new environment. I imagine a bull in a grocery store.
I climb into my bed and he follows suit, then turns to face me. He holds the side of my face for a moment, staring into my eyes. It is a calm look, the bottom of a swimming pool, the loneliness a dark triangle in the center of my chest.
“Now?” he asks.
“Yes, please,” and then I roll over, curling, waiting for him to do it.
He moves his body around mine and presses, wraps his arms and one leg around me, buries his face into the back of my neck.
I exhale and go another type of soft, a softness unrecorded before, I sink back into him, rest my body on his thighs, chest, more. He holds tighter, tighter, and then the loneliness gets small, smaller, smallest until it is a pinprick, an inverse star, a dust (1894).
Part III
Each night, I dream of knots: Squares, lariats, double bows, rolling hitches, surgeons.
◆ The clove hitch is the weakest of all common knots
◆ To loosen a tight knot, one must rub it against a rock or soak it in water
◆ The Mystic Knot is a combination of six infinity knots and a symbol of long life full of good fortune
◆ Whenever a piece of rope is knotted, it is weakened (2362)
HOW’S THE COUNTRY TREATING YOU?” comes my father’s voice over the line.
How to say it: The sunrise could cripple your heart, the lake glistens better than the eyes of all men, the moon is larger than all moons combined and stands on the mountains each night to keep watch over my body (2396)?
Then we get into the car and I drive us home, my mother trembling in the front seat. Later, in the night, they start their fires for his body.
◆ During cremation, the body is placed in an oven that reaches 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit
◆ Large magnets pick up metal fillings and body replacements after cremation
◆ A pile of bones is left behind after cremation
◆ The bones are ground into ashes which are given to the family (2750)
Part I
I picture her mouth with duct tape over it, the sky widening with calmness above my head in the bright new silence (658).
I roll out of bed to go to the bathroom. A shock shoots through my veins when I find blood between my legs, a pool of it freshly staining my white cotton underwear. It’s a burgundy mark, scented like the Meat Quarry.
I run to my mother’s room.
“I’m bleeding,” I say, gesturing between the legs, mortified.
“We don’t have time for this,” my mother says.
She pushes a thick wad of cotton at me.
“Figure it out,” she says. “And you better watch out. Things are going to start changing for you now.”
In the bathroom, I mop the blood between my legs. I shove the cotton in the hole where I think it should go (817).
THAT NIGHT, I BLEED THROUGH THE cotton and through my clothes. I wake drenched in the wetness of my own blood, the white of the mattress ruined.
DAYS LATER, JARRED KISSES ME IN THE empty hallway between classes. He presses his face hard against mine.
“I think I like you,” he says.
His mouth tastes like salt and metal. I touch his hair and it is like touching a holy monument. I go quiet from the glow of it. Below, I am still bleeding, red, redder, reddest, bleeding and kissing (846).
Part II
EACH MORNING, I YANK THE STRAY HAIRS from my face, brush my teeth, apply my makeup.
Then I put on the costume for work: Black pants, white blouse, green cardigan, low-heeled black shoes.
Before I leave, I put in my false heart, which sits in front of my regular heart. The false heart is made of thin red plastic and covers my real heart, quiets the beating, an extra protection.
I walk slowly to the office. I have a short daydream about my body back home, in bed, in the warmth and sheets. The vision washes over me like a drug, what a pleasant pleasure just to imagine it (1209).
I picture love: They must be next to each other in bed. They must be feeding each other small cakes. They are definitely fucking constantly. They must be warm (1266).
VISION
I don’t ask for much at home. It is silent there. I light three candles, then I stare at the walls while the hours pass.
On the walls, I keep a calendar. Here, I monitor my emotional states. Today, for instance, I write down EVACUATED because I don’t feel myself in my body. Instead, I feel like a glistening container waiting to be filled with an event or a love. Each morning in the mirror, I chant the phrase, “I am someone waiting for something to happen.”
Sometimes, I play a record. Sometimes, I read a book.
Within the pages of the book are photographs of craters in the earth taken from space. Often, the craters look like scars on the human skin of land. When a crater hits earth, debris is released which can pollute the air, or even block the sun. It is important to learn one fact each day to keep the mind sharp.
Always, I am standing outside of myself while I watch my other self complete these tasks. I report back with updates: We are eating chicken. We are sharpening our minds. We are expanding our skill sets. One day, someone will happen upon us and love us genuinely and truly for these motions (1292).
They’re all going to die one day, my heart calls again.
I PICTURE IT: THREE TOMBSTONES, THREE times my head over the casket, three perfectly still faces in repose, three times the hollow sound of soil hitting casket.
“What’s wrong?” my mother asks.
I can’t speak, my chest is paralyzed, my lungs won’t make air.
“I know you hate coming home,” she says. “I know you can’t stand it.”
My mouth is stuck open, pained, the terrifying future stuck in my head, chiseled into the gray matter of my brain.
“It isn’t that,” I say finally.
“Just admit that you hate us and you don’t want to be here,” she says, slamming down her fork.
My throat is so full of love and sorrow that no more words come out. I can’t breathe and I know nothing, looking into the heart of the future, the relentless oncoming of death (1610).
VISION
I take Jarred out into the throat fields because I need something to strangle.
“It’ll be five dollars per,” a man in overalls calls to us and I pay.
“It’s been a long week at work,” I explain.
“I don’t understand,” Jarred says.
Discomfort blares off his skin in the sun. This is his first time, and I want it to be tender.
In the field around us, bare necks reach toward the sun, short stalks of flesh, the raw edges of the throats blooming the color of old blood at the center.
How did he see me before this? Poised with the right hair. Now, I am disheveled, wearing filthy sweats, bags under eyes.
Lately, the fury has been keeping me up. My anger boils under my skin at work, beneath the fluorescent lights of the office. All I have ever wanted is a soft place. At night, I dream of rooms filled with feathers or cotton which will keep us both safe.
“You don’t feel the same anymore, do you?” I ask out in the throat fields.
I can feel his ebbs and flows instantly. I know when he is turning from me in the slightest way, as if the face of a flower toward a second sun, or a planet drifting from its stationary orbit.
“Remember the good days?” I ask. “You loved me once.”
He looks carved as stone: No words, just that straight face.
“Say something,” I say. The necks keep their stance.
The silence is bigger than suns, it is the silence of distant galaxies. The universe begins to crumble. The rage roars truck-like through my blood.
I throw myself to my knees in the field. I grab a good neck, a thick neck. I look up at him with my mania. The rage multiplies and I wrap fingers around the flesh.
“SAY SOMETHING,” I scream.
I clench hard, good around the throat. I squeeze until my fingers want to break. The skin caves in beneath, which feels good, a nasty satisfaction. I strangle harder, until I go dizzy from lack of oxygen, until my rage deflates.
I pant on the ground before him, my weakening fingers loosening around the skin. He stands in the field, still silent. I stare up at his throat which is long and thick, glinting in the light like a golden coin.
This is how love begins to end (1647).
A torrent of images fills my brain: My cold body sleeping alone, similar to death, my aimless hours. I want to sob when I think about the loneliness of my life, my days like unvisited graves. My eyes fill (1770).
VISION
The dark loneliness which has been hibernating in my ribs becomes a thick onyx slab that presses down over me.
It takes all of my strength to reach beyond the weight of the slab to pick up the phone. I manage to do it, then I dial the number.
“Thanks for calling Stranger Sleep. How can we help you?”
“I’d like to request a visit.”
“Would you like the same as your last order?”
“Yes, please.”
“Fifty dollars will be charged to your account. He should be there in ten minutes.”
I lean back against the pillow and the next nine minutes stretch black desert miserable, but I face it, I face it head on, I lie beneath the black rock and let it hurt, let it crush the ribs a bit.
When the doorbell rings, I struggle out from under it. I open the door, and he steps into the yellow foyer. He is tall and handsome. I avoid his eyes. Now the loneliness is a large black cube resting in my stomach: square, blunt.
“Hi there,” he says.
“Hello.”
I move down the hallway and he follows.
It is strange to see him in my bedroom, a rare creature in a new environment. I imagine a bull in a grocery store.
I climb into my bed and he follows suit, then turns to face me. He holds the side of my face for a moment, staring into my eyes. It is a calm look, the bottom of a swimming pool, the loneliness a dark triangle in the center of my chest.
“Now?” he asks.
“Yes, please,” and then I roll over, curling, waiting for him to do it.
He moves his body around mine and presses, wraps his arms and one leg around me, buries his face into the back of my neck.
I exhale and go another type of soft, a softness unrecorded before, I sink back into him, rest my body on his thighs, chest, more. He holds tighter, tighter, and then the loneliness gets small, smaller, smallest until it is a pinprick, an inverse star, a dust (1894).
Part III
Each night, I dream of knots: Squares, lariats, double bows, rolling hitches, surgeons.
◆ The clove hitch is the weakest of all common knots
◆ To loosen a tight knot, one must rub it against a rock or soak it in water
◆ The Mystic Knot is a combination of six infinity knots and a symbol of long life full of good fortune
◆ Whenever a piece of rope is knotted, it is weakened (2362)
HOW’S THE COUNTRY TREATING YOU?” comes my father’s voice over the line.
How to say it: The sunrise could cripple your heart, the lake glistens better than the eyes of all men, the moon is larger than all moons combined and stands on the mountains each night to keep watch over my body (2396)?
Then we get into the car and I drive us home, my mother trembling in the front seat. Later, in the night, they start their fires for his body.
◆ During cremation, the body is placed in an oven that reaches 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit
◆ Large magnets pick up metal fillings and body replacements after cremation
◆ A pile of bones is left behind after cremation
◆ The bones are ground into ashes which are given to the family (2750)