Bodies

Months later, when they finally discharge me, I am afraid to leave the hospital. Terrified that the second I step out into the world, everyone will know. Everyone will be able to tell exactly what I am, what I did, what I forced you to sacrifice. What I asked for so selfishly.
   The doctors tell me that’s an unhealthy mindset. That you were already dead. That I was dying. That this way, one of us lived. That this is a gift.
   When I look out the window, I can see signs proclaiming me an abomination. And I think I know who I believe.
   But I cannot stay here forever, wasting you away. In my mind, I think—it has to mean something. I have to make it mean something. Even if you are dead, I will not let your memory wither in vain, your sacrifice be worthless. So I leave.
   I half expect to be torn apart when I step outside. I expect the protestors’ eyes to narrow in on me, hungry eyes and grasping hands revealing exactly what I am, what I’ve made of you. I expect them to be able to tell that something is so obviously wrong with me.
   Instead, I pass without issue. The protestors don’t even register me, not even when I freeze upon seeing the size of their mob. They continue jeering up at the wall of the hospital, hefting their signs like a heartbeat. They can’t even tell I am so clearly not you. They don’t even recognize the thing they revile.
   I walk past them, shaky with nerves and high on the realization—how stupid, how ignorant, how idiotic do they have to be? How can they not tell? Isn’t it obvious? Isn’t it? I am nothing like you. I could never be.
   Your bones, your body may now be mine, but nothing else is. Surely, there’s some stark difference these people don’t even care to see. I fancy it’s somewhere in the eyes, or the gait, so I walk past them quickly, avoiding eye contact.
   Someone catches my arm, and my heart stops in your chest. I jerk back, meeting the eyes of a sharp-faced woman about my age, expecting disgust, hate, rage at my insolence, for thinking I could pass so easily.
   I see only concern. “Sorry to startle you, ma’am,” she says, taking a step back. 
   It takes me a half second to realize that’s addressing me, that to this woman, I am no longer her peer. I’m you. Somewhat hysterically, I think—I’m old enough to be her mother. 
   “You dropped this.” In her hand, she holds my wallet. Mine. The one with my ID in it. My face, not yours.
   A million excuses pass through my head—I look so different with makeup on; I was picking it up for my daughter; that’s not mine—but in the end, I need none of them. I take my wallet with a murmur of, “thanks,” and the woman is none the wiser.
   She smiles at me, a small, sympathetic thing, and presses a piece of paper into your hands. I look down at it, and see—“If you’re interested in the cause,” she explains, cheerfully, as my stomach drops. “I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like, knowing you were being treated in such a wildly unethical facility.”
   “Yeah,” I say, faintly, staring at the flyer. It’s printed on green paper with bold black ink outlining every reason why I should be dead. 
   “We should all feel safe in hospitals, you know?” She shudders. “I don’t think I could ever feel safe, knowing what they do to people. It’s just not right—did you know they absolutely shoved it through animal testing? I mean, it’s not totally proven, but the signs are all there. No public data? No papers? No nothing? Mark my words, the animals either died, or they didn’t do any trials at all before going straight to swapping people around.”
   “Uh-huh.” I take a step back. Then another. Then I’m walking away. Then I’m running.
   The woman calls something after me, but I don’t stop moving until I’m far, far away. When I stop in the middle of a sidewalk, your lungs heaving for breath, I stare down at the crumpled flyer in my hands. People move around me like water around a rock, like I’m not even there. And I’m not, am I?
   It’s you. You’re what they see. Your hands, your face, your eyes, your nose—and absolutely none of them will ever be able to tell that they’re so woefully wrong.
   I laugh, slightly, and even that must be yours.
   Daughters become their mothers. You always said it like a tired joke, like a sad inevitability, and I would laugh my own laugh because it never sounded like such a terrible fate. I always thought I wouldn’t mind it, being you.
   We were already so similar. People always said I had your nose, your eyes, your lips, your laugh—now I have all that and more. I have all that, and I don’t have you.
   All I have is your skin, and so little of me to fill it.
   Sometimes, I pretend to be you. Is that terrible of me? I wrap myself in your image—your clothes, your routines, your recipes, your work, what little of your life I can remember—and I pretend, selfishly, fleetingly, that you survived and I did not. 
   It doesn’t work, not really. Your fingers recall graceful motions that I make clumsy. I expect your clothes to smell of you, familiar and warm like morning linens, and instead they smell like nothing at all. Which I suppose means they smell like me. Like you, to yourself.
   Still, there are moments. Whole and beautiful slices of time where I can pretend you’re still here. When I close my eyes, I can pretend that these footsteps are yours. That you’re just out of sight, just out of reach, that seeing you again will be as easy as turning a corner. As easy as calling your name.
   Anything but easy as looking in a mirror.
   I pretend that you’re still here, wholly yourself, because it’s better than being whatever you and I are now. I pretend because I want an easy answer. I pretend because I’ll never get one.
   There is so much of you I will never know. Yesterday, I found your ring hidden in your nightstand and realized I don’t even recall when you stopped wearing it. I never asked why. Or maybe I just never noticed.
   I make the meals I once loved and find that your tongue doesn’t care for them. I never knew. There is so much I never knew, and now I am a patchwork of everything you didn’t tell me, everything I never thought to ask, every gap between us.
   It’s funny, isn’t it. How much of me is you. How much of you is now me. How much and how little is known between your body and my mind.
   In the winter, your eczema is terrible. Your skin peels and cracks, paper thin, the itch unbearable. Your wrists, your neck, great swathes of your stomach turn scaly, and it feels redundant to say I didn’t know. To say I don’t know what to do. How to make it better. How to make you better. So I don’t.
   That winter, I give up. I let your skin crack and bleed, trying to unmake your image, trying to prove I can. Like if I peel enough of your skin off in flakey fragments, I’ll find myself underneath.
   I won’t. I don’t. I just find more of you, and for the life of you, I cannot find myself.
   You always said that mothers should never outlive their daughters. But these days, I’m uncertain which one of us really died.

The doctors tell me that’s an unhealthy mindset. That you were already dead. That I was dying. That this way, one of us lived. That this is a gift.

When I look out the window, I can see signs proclaiming me an abomination. And I think I know who I believe.

But I cannot stay here forever, wasting you away. In my mind, I think—it has to mean something. I have to make it mean something. Even if you are dead, I will not let your memory wither in vain, your sacrifice be worthless. So I leave.

I half expect to be torn apart when I step outside. I expect the protestors’ eyes to narrow in on me, hungry eyes and grasping hands revealing exactly what I am, what I’ve made of you. I expect them to be able to tell that something is so obviously wrong with me.

Instead, I pass without issue. The protestors don’t even register me, not even when I freeze upon seeing the size of their mob. They continue jeering up at the wall of the hospital, hefting their signs like a heartbeat. They can’t even tell I am so clearly not you. They don’t even recognize the thing they revile.

I walk past them, shaky with nerves and high on the realization—how stupid, how ignorant, how idiotic do they have to be? How can they not tell? Isn’t it obvious? Isn’t it? I am nothing like you. I could never be.

Your bones, your body may now be mine, but nothing else is. Surely, there’s some stark difference these people don’t even care to see. I fancy it’s somewhere in the eyes, or the gait, so I walk past them quickly, avoiding eye contact.

Someone catches my arm, and my heart stops in your chest. I jerk back, meeting the eyes of a sharp-faced woman about my age, expecting disgust, hate, rage at my insolence, for thinking I could pass so easily.

I see only concern. “Sorry to startle you, ma’am,” she says, taking a step back. 

It takes me a half second to realize that’s addressing me, that to this woman, I am no longer her peer. I’m you. Somewhat hysterically, I think—I’m old enough to be her mother. 

“You dropped this.” In her hand, she holds my wallet. Mine. The one with my ID in it. My face, not yours.

A million excuses pass through my head—I look so different with makeup on; I was picking it up for my daughter; that’s not mine—but in the end, I need none of them. I take my wallet with a murmur of, “thanks,” and the woman is none the wiser.

She smiles at me, a small, sympathetic thing, and presses a piece of paper into your hands. I look down at it, and see—“If you’re interested in the cause,” she explains, cheerfully, as my stomach drops. “I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like, knowing you were being treated in such a wildly unethical facility.”

“Yeah,” I say, faintly, staring at the flyer. It’s printed on green paper with bold black ink outlining every reason why I should be dead. 

“We should all feel safe in hospitals, you know?” She shudders. “I don’t think I could ever feel safe, knowing what they do to people. It’s just not right—did you know they absolutely shoved it through animal testing? I mean, it’s not totally proven, but the signs are all there. No public data? No papers? No nothing? Mark my words, the animals either died, or they didn’t do any trials at all before going straight to swapping people around.”

“Uh-huh.” I take a step back. Then another. Then I’m walking away. Then I’m running.

The woman calls something after me, but I don’t stop moving until I’m far, far away. When I stop in the middle of a sidewalk, your lungs heaving for breath, I stare down at the crumpled flyer in my hands. People move around me like water around a rock, like I’m not even there. And I’m not, am I?

It’s you. You’re what they see. Your hands, your face, your eyes, your nose—and absolutely none of them will ever be able to tell that they’re so woefully wrong.

I laugh, slightly, and even that must be yours.

Daughters become their mothers. You always said it like a tired joke, like a sad inevitability, and I would laugh my own laugh because it never sounded like such a terrible fate. I always thought I wouldn’t mind it, being you.

We were already so similar. People always said I had your nose, your eyes, your lips, your laugh—now I have all that and more. I have all that, and I don’t have you.

All I have is your skin, and so little of me to fill it.

Sometimes, I pretend to be you. Is that terrible of me? I wrap myself in your image—your clothes, your routines, your recipes, your work, what little of your life I can remember—and I pretend, selfishly, fleetingly, that you survived and I did not. 

It doesn’t work, not really. Your fingers recall graceful motions that I make clumsy. I expect your clothes to smell of you, familiar and warm like morning linens, and instead they smell like nothing at all. Which I suppose means they smell like me. Like you, to yourself.

Still, there are moments. Whole and beautiful slices of time where I can pretend you’re still here. When I close my eyes, I can pretend that these footsteps are yours. That you’re just out of sight, just out of reach, that seeing you again will be as easy as turning a corner. As easy as calling your name.

Anything but easy as looking in a mirror.

I pretend that you’re still here, wholly yourself, because it’s better than being whatever you and I are now. I pretend because I want an easy answer. I pretend because I’ll never get one.

There is so much of you I will never know. Yesterday, I found your ring hidden in your nightstand and realized I don’t even recall when you stopped wearing it. I never asked why. Or maybe I just never noticed.

I make the meals I once loved and find that your tongue doesn’t care for them. I never knew. There is so much I never knew, and now I am a patchwork of everything you didn’t tell me, everything I never thought to ask, every gap between us.

It’s funny, isn’t it. How much of me is you. How much of you is now me. How much and how little is known between your body and my mind.

In the winter, your eczema is terrible. Your skin peels and cracks, paper thin, the itch unbearable. Your wrists, your neck, great swathes of your stomach turn scaly, and it feels redundant to say I didn’t know. To say I don’t know what to do. How to make it better. How to make you better. So I don’t.

That winter, I give up. I let your skin crack and bleed, trying to unmake your image, trying to prove I can. Like if I peel enough of your skin off in flakey fragments, I’ll find myself underneath.

I won’t. I don’t. I just find more of you, and for the life of you, I cannot find myself.

You always said that mothers should never outlive their daughters. But these days, I’m uncertain which one of us really died.