Elyssa Tappero

CW: death/dying, brief mentions of mental illness, blood, and decay

Only Your Rot

Sometimes I wish my body was your body. I know I shouldn’t, and why would I? Who wants to be

always dead or dying? Who chooses to be trapped inside a burning building? But I do, because it is

you. I want to hold up my arms and see how they taper to elegant hands that so casually cradle a

knife. I want to feel how gracefully this scarce body bends and turns, and how hard and unyielding it

becomes when it takes what it wants. I want to see in my reflection the unforgiving lines of your face

and stare into the deep wells of your eyes. And yes, I want to know what it is like to rot from within, to

taste blood in the back of my mouth and feel my sanity crumbling at the edges – but only in your

body; only your rot. Decay is only as beautiful as the thing it destroys, and thus you in your

unbearable perfection have elevated dying to an art form.

Meatsuit Mechanic’s Manual

Look, I’m just the pilot; I don’t have any control over what meatsuit I was assigned. I didn’t get to pick

the make or model or color or any of that, I just operate the damn thing. It’s a machine, you know?

And this one came off the factory floor full of design flaws and defects so it requires even more work

than some others to keep it functioning. I try my best to maintain all the parts, I even call in a

mechanic when a task’s above my skill level, but I didn’t choose this 24/7 job and I’m really not that

attached to it. The meatsuit doesn’t define me. I don’t identify with any of its individual components or

the composite whole. I’m the operator, separate from that which is operated. Try to remember that

when you look at me; I’m stuck inside this unit but that doesn’t mean you should judge me by its

appearance. After all, what am I supposed to do – trade it in for a new one?

My Body Has Never Been a Home

Of course this body has never felt right – not because my gender identity clashes with its appearance,

though, but because my body has never been a refuge. How could I recognize the discomfort of

dysphoria when pain, anxiety, and exhaustion dominate my senses? How could I discern whether this

disconnect between spirit and flesh is caused by a lack of gender or by all these years spent trapped

in chronic illness? When it comes down to it, I’m not sure I’ll ever know whether I’m unhappy in my

body because it looks “female” or because it has only ever been a burden requiring constant care. I

can change my appearance all I want, slick back my short hair, cover my skin in tattoos, but that

won’t stop the migraines or the stomach aches or the OCD. Even the clothing I wear is always half

aesthetic and half will I be too warm in this or too cold, will it make me sweat too much and cause a

panic attack, will this hat keep me from picking my scalp bloody or will it give me a headache instead?

It’s always something; between the faulty wiring in my brain and all the other aching, breaking bits, I

don’t really have tools sensitive enough to scan for undercurrents of dysphoria. My body has never

been a home and maybe it never will be, no matter what colors I paint the outside or what interior

walls I tear down.

Scribe

I am above all things the scribe. That is my gender, my religion, my morality and creed. See these?

They are the scribe’s bones. And these? The scribe’s breasts. Cut open my organs and watch them

bleed ink. Uncoil the long strands of my DNA and see how words build its base pairs, not polymers:

scribe, sesh, scrība, scríobhaí, grammateús, dubsar. The gods claimed me for their own at my

spiritual conception, pressing their fingerprints into the soft surface of my newborn soul so I would

carry their whorls and ridges forever. I do not know who I am outside of this role because I do not

exist as a complete being apart from it. I am the scribe before every name I have ever borne and

beneath every face I have ever worn. And I will be the scribe in every life, in every universe, unto the

end of all existence.