I’m going to tell you about something that happened to me, and you don’t have to believe it, but you have to be prepared to imagine it.

There’s a pool of darkness, out of which came light. The darkness preceded the light, and the light made everything brighter. I was there, in the beginning, before anything took form. The brightness hurt, and it felt wrong. There was a warmth to the darkness, but this new light was cold.

I’m shaped into a body. My consciousness is unaware. It learns the pieces of my body as they receive connection, electrical impulses. Before it’s bridged to another, it doesn’t really exist.

A long time passed. It was sticky, and other things were only imagined.

I learned that my skin is made for carbonation. Its place is beneath bubbles and harsh sugars and ester gum. My skin stains easily, sloppily, falling into linework and spilling over.---

There was Mercury, to touch me. Mercury, my old love, carried me into this body, nestling my soul in its folds and teaching me what noises to make. I gravitated to her and was embarrassed to all onlookers, though there was only one place I knew how to look. My breath was hers, and she learned me like we learn the tides.

Mercury, my own personal garden of Eden, my chill in summertime, my buried rose amidst the gravel.

Here I go again, into the glass case of my own making. Comfort in here is only found when I hold on tight to memories of freedom and unfired sand. My palms mark the walls and I know I’ve made it unclean. But Mercury stands, stares, smiles. Something creeps down my spine.

The observation case holds me for three days before I am released. I am permitted one word to the outside per day.

On day one, I chose “cold.”

On day two, I chose “fear.”

On day three, “gratitude.”

The ropes are uncomfortable until they start to come off. The binding is feared until you feel freedom. Step into the light and remember the warm darkness.

Mercury, o Mercury! I feel freedom only when your fingertips run along me and your vibrations fill my ear. Witness me! Influence! Spend something that costs nothing to you but covers me in riches.

Yes, I would take anything for myself if it were given freely. And you abound like a meadow’s insect populace, small and skittering, countless and continuous, all of you hidden to human eyes, but felt clearly.

Here is how you ended me. It was like a dream:

The cheaper anesthetic, the stuff from corner stores, that only partially cuts consciousness.

A palm on the small of my back, warmer than I knew it could be. Your blood was rushing.

The feathers you had made up for me, stabbing, all pale white, to the specifications of each of my pores.

The unmistakable electric current running through me places a premium on dissociation but commands me to instead feel it all.

A forcing amount of sticky, sticky water, impurified by so many additives as to be drug-like, poured all over me.

I looked beautiful. I appeared like you made me appear, like I always imagined I could be. You asked me if this was it, if I had always wanted to become a subjugate. Through tears, I said I had never known there was a word for what I wanted.

and you took me and you trashed me and covered me in etchings. you looked for me and you smashed me and offered me no blessings. i ached for you and you choked me. you turned off my receptors for thirst and for hunger. you turned off my hands and my touch. you changed the color of my eyes from brown to blue. my blood roamed free and my lungs were finally given rest. and there i was, as beautiful as the day i was born. but quiet.