[The subject sucks the stone in her ring so hard her cheeks crowd between her teeth, almost touching, until the thing pops out of the fastenings. The diamond, wild, pinballs lightning-quick, cracking her teeth and shredding down her throat. She is left with empty sockets in the gums and a mouthful of now-useless minerals while the precious one coasts down her throat on a coating of fresh blood.]
When she arrived, the subject appeared nervous. Apprehensive. This fucking coat is too heavy and this stethoscope is strangling poor me. Hazards abound for the subject—
CHOKING: Before I swallowed it for the first time, I pressed it against my dry lips in a kiss, dragging my tongue along every groove, remembering the day that he got down on his knee in the street while I pretended to know what rocks against knees felt like when you’re looking up at a woman, as if setting makes a difference. He slipped the ring around my neck and it fit so perfectly I couldn’t say anything but get up off the ground what the hell is this now and why are we both dangling here. Then I stood there with my metal noose, sparkling a challenge up to billions of stars that my neck is the brightest and all you other starlets need to stay up there where you belong because there’s only room for one of us here.
[There is trouble. The diamond nestles inside her throat, reluctant to pass any further, as if some prior ritual had given the stone the power of longing—of course, impossible. The stone hovers inside of her. Her swallows weigh down the diamond as it struggles with each rise of her breath to release itself, and each fall to be done for good. Every swallow is another sandbag, until the diamond waves its goodbyes, grieves, and continues past her heart without any
HELLO
consideration.]
When turned blue, we watched her more closely. Her temperature fell rapidly. The data we collected exceeded our expectations not really from the very beginning I knew she would die poor thing, allowing us to take an especially dramatic photo of the scene—
NAUSEA: When you walk into my room, straight ahead there, on the back wall, is an old stain, frozen in a dripping state like a caricature of red-orange tears. The carpet around it is spotted, tainted with the remains of an old half-eaten can of cold ravioli that I threw at his face and missed. His head would have exploded with the force, wrenching along his whole face and out the back, ripping off all that bone and leaving nothing but blood and cheese filled pasta.
I got it from my dad, thinking canned ravioli was disrespectful. If he came home and saw us eating it, the sauce in all our mouths would taste metallic from the weight of his hand against our lips. We’d all feel like vampires, then, drinking down our own blood without making a sound.
[It spilled out of her like waterfalls. The diamond had produced so many lacerations inside of her that everyone could see a sparkle here and there through some fold of shredded skin, which dangled in red ribbons off of her as blood forced its way out of her and onto the examination room floor.
HERE IT COMES
During the final portion of the study, her limbs finally shot away from themselves due to the diamond’s pressure. She rested in an impossible position, her arms and legs and head thrown about the room.]
Everyone is focusing on her mouth hanging open. During the study, the subject couldn’t communicate vocally. Instead, she relied on the placement of her text to somehow give us meaning. In the bag labeled with her name, processed before the experiment, we found her only dialogue—
narrator
drowning under daybreak and sifting my hands through this unbelievable rock to find a gem means something chapped my heart is thirsty and i am not believable, i need something, anything at all beyond watching the light drip soft on everyone else’s face i want to take a soft cloth and wipe it all off until
it’s black, and maybe then i’ll forget. my eyes are changing colors i am bland and fat with tears am getting older, no one likes this , my reading of never learn to turn the world is the cracked bell on my shoulders scratching holes into an old shirt and what the hell am i doing doesn’t jam the tube through my cracked chest to drain mythology, broken into many parts, the organs, now, the denouement
an oral tradition about birds exploding and creating the chambers of the heart, still unfinished. my lips and the story is chapped from over and over
OVER
RESULTS: Our best oral and heart surgeons are unable to mend I loved her. The last photo shows irreparable damage—
