Emily Sater
I sit, chained to the bottom of a burning hell. I am forever over-heated, forever thirsty. I think about cold droplets of water for thousands of uncomfortable, stuffy breaths. For there is no time here. Only constant. Only eternal fire. I know no hope of future, or even past. There is only now. Now – burning away in hell.
*
We snorted cocaine and talked passionately for hours. You asked me what love was and I told you it’s something lost, waiting to be found. Your eyes had grown big and as you looked at me, across the coffee table; I fell through them like black holes. They were like our cat’s eyes, deep voids.
I stayed up, most of the night. Sitting on our brown couch that doesn’t eat but consumes our things. The lights – shimmering blue, like living underwater. Sometimes I feel subsumed by water or air, by energy. It’s a heaviness, but somehow effervescent.
Lately, I stare at others and wonder how to be in another’s mind. Their body. Their life. It gives me anxiety – so many of us, each so little. The unfeelingness of the universe. The anonymity. The nothingness of it all.
*
I have not lost any mental capacity, not lost any thought. But my thought no longer belongs to me, nor do I. For there is only we. We – burning – now – in hell. Thoughts come to me, whether they were once mine I do not know. We are one – and yet – there is only one voice here – but it may not be those which once were mine. The voice might not exist at all. As collective minds tend to lose those thoughts, the ones that seem to have been yours.
*
I have this image of you, standing on the couch, barefoot and in ecstasy. You twirl, and each time, I sigh. Another image comes to mind, a pale girl in a blue hospital gown. You seemed so broken, no, unsure. Afraid of yourself. I remember that, being afraid of your own mind.
Slowly, as everything felt slow there, your body began to fill with energy. As a vase is filled with tepid water, you too, filled.
When I visited you again, the next day, your eyes were brighter. And the day after that, brighter still.
*
We exist in separate bodies, but not separate souls. That is the biggest myth of all – one having one’s own soul. There is only fluid energy. It is siphoned out of each body at the fiery gate, into the chasm.
*
We’re in a patch of sunlight, it seems like the only solace in the frigid world. We huddle together and whisper in circles. You tell me that I’m beautiful and brimming. I brim, tears pouring down my cheeks. We run off in hopes of a bath. Before I notice we’re naked, I’m submerged in the hot water. It burns the ice away.
*
Within the body, I hope to claim my own, there is shame. Shame that exists in a physical pain, but more so, an internal burning. “Your” consciousness is being seared and because you have no you, and your consciousness is not really yours, you continue to burn. This burning is gut-wrenching. I feel it in the pit of this body. A vessel that was empty, begins to fill with acid. This vessel, this body, that burns now in hell, without a consciousness of its own.
*
The pause you take, before you speak, it used to terrify me. My mind would race through plausible things to say. But then you would speak, in a soft, melodic voice. Gently, you began to unwind the puzzle that I knew of you. Stories of childhood loneliness, of teenage angst, of a longing that I found at my pit, too.
*
Now, this body sits, without a soul, without a name. I remember it, from before, but it does not exist here. There is no one here to call it, and so it has been lost. Names only exist in action, in voice. Without an identifier, our individuality is further forgotten.
*
I remember you lying on my bed, in my very untidy room. It was night already and the shrooms were beginning to wear off. You glowed. For some reason in my memories of you, you softly glow. It’s a luminescence of your skin. It was sensual then, it is grossly platonic now. I have to remember to ask you what that really means – platonic. Of Plato? Of the Symposium?
How gay is it to ask, “are you my other half?”
I saw you as some angel, some nymph – something sublime, fantastical, unreal.
After, I felt your glow within me, too.
*
We wait, chained to our home of hell. We are impatient, as waiting is. We were all promised another chance. We were told we would be judged again. Judged a final time. Judged in this burning hell. By him – Him – Them. They are to sit on the golden throne that awaits Them – it is still cool to the touch, even as it waits in this burning hell. Then, we will have names again. They will call them, and we will form a queue of blistered bodies.
*
You visited me, at my parents’ home (I can no longer call that place home, after ours), you were my salvation. My family took to you like honey in hot tea, meltingly, easily. They took you out, leaving me alone. I didn’t mind, overwhelmed by affection.
We drove to each part of the city, smoking mostly. We took a bath, in my parents’ tub. This time it didn’t matter we were naked, more used to that than being clothed.
*
We sit, chained to the bottom of this burning hell. We swallow, repeatedly, attempting to swallow the scalding dryness away. We wonder, together, in one thought, one mind – will we be angels?