Watching the Black Death sequence in BELLADONNA OF SADNESS [Yamamoto, 1973] for the first time

the slowly wasting
away into nothingness,
swallowed up by
rivers of every
other peasant’s
commonplace
nothingness until
there’s nothing
left of anyone,
anywhere, beneath
a shimmering, purple
and black, starless
endtime sky –

I felt that.

Some say self-love is a skill

Being alone with myself is like riding a pulsating, overpacked bus [on a route with five hard-to-catch transfers] during the morning rush after waking up thirty-three minutes after I should’ve left and now, I’m late no matter what I do or don’t, it’s sticky and sweaty even though the bus is unheated and it’s 40 below outside, while someone with strong, grimy fingers gropes whichever spot on my body I’m feeling most self-conscious about that day. Oh, yeah. And the three-week-old corpse of someone else’s shitty grandpa was sewn to my back while I slept, and he doesn’t smell fresh and powdered or like anything that could be mildly considered dry or unrotten and every single person on the bus, including the bloodshot, swerving driver, are focusing the full depth of their available vitriol on me and poor grandpa’s noxious flesh and loosely dangling bones [hatred which should be directed at whatever oddly accented gangsters snuck into my room in the middle of the night while I was passed out and stitched a melting corpse to my mottled, unwashed but otherwise living flesh]. It’s like that. Being alone with myself.