Dodo Eraser

1. begin by naming what is certain, consecrate it to memory: the locked room, the supine body, and you. one of these doesn’t belong, one of these things needs to go. this is a house for the dead, and you are not yet dead, despite all your wishing.
2. if you want to find the exit you’re going to want to retrace your steps to the beginning. how you got to be inside here in the first place, how you got locked within. it is time for vivisecting. it is time to disinter your heart.
3. trace a circle around the measure of your inheritance, draw it tight like a noose— your father’s embalmed body. this haunted house. a knot in your stomach. a curse in your blood. the taste of grave in your mouth. an invisible taut string leading from his wrist to your neck. in the end your father was generous— he left you a corpse. he was also predictable; he left you behind.
4. this is a haunting that began long before you were born and will rage on long after you’re dead. you just happened to stumble right into the innards of it, like the unlucky girl that you are.
5. you could always exit the room by exiting your body. you too can choose to leave yourself behind. but that is cheating the game by not playing. that is violating your father into oblivion. ideally you walk out with his hand on a leash. ideally the curse stays behind. but you have never been good at fixing things, only at ruining them.
6. it may be hard to glance inward with so little substance, but you must keep going. without his gaze to mold you you have become translucent, hollow. you are no longer a daughter so you are no longer a body. in the end your father robbed more than he left.
7. once you were a little girl who carved gods out of the damp earth. here’s an entire pantheon of your father, his features smeared out, your handprints baked into them.
8. your father never loved you. your father tolerated you. there is a distinction between volition and duty, between being beloved and being a burden. you thought that by making yourself smaller you could ease the burden. so you made yourself invisible. you made yourself a maggot.
9. your sister still haunts you. you envy her fate. you loved her, you miss her, you no longer remember what she looked like. when you picture her face it’s only the shape of your failings that stares back. you always knew that he would follow her, just as you knew your love was never enough to keep him from dying.
10. in time you will realize that the door was never locked. you were just chained in. but you had to have your own tragedy, your own victimization.
11. past a certain point a body no longer smells like home, it just smells like meat. your father’s love has always been prone to decay. you’ve been kicked and starved and chained by devotion, but even the faithful dog locked with its dead master will eventually cave to hunger. a dog’s nature is to eat. with enough bites the hand will come loose, and so will the leash. you have always been a dog. so eat.

a.d. is drawn to the sacred, the profane, the mysterious and the mythological, which provides inspiration for her work. She is an award-nominated poet, writer, and visual artist, and her work has appeared in HAD, God’s Cruel Joke, Cosmic Daffodil, Hominum Journal, Blood+Honey, and elsewhere. Tumblr & Twitter: @godstained