CATHERINE. LACEY

Clara Gauthier

Sometimes I think I might be writing a letter to sleep, that I might be asking him if he remembers me, if he ever plans on coming back. 

I was buried by night. The body is already dead, I thought. I was still smiling. The body is your tomb. 

When the outside is far enough from you, that is when a person can sleep.

Sometimes I think I might be writing a letter to sleep, that I might be asking him if he remembers me, if he ever plans on coming back. I’ve received no word from death’s brother.

Can only other people tell you what your body is, or is there a way that you can know something truer about it from the inside, something that cannot be seen or explained?

I felt I wasn’t the only one, that there must have been others, that I was part of a “we,” only I didn’t know where they were.

...lost in the idea of a disembodied world, one where ideas could hold other ideas, where thoughts could see other thoughts and death couldn't end thoughts, where one remained alive by thinking and was not alive if not thinking.

Did everyone feel this vacillating, animal loneliness after removing clothes? How could I still be in this thing, answering to its endless needs and betrayals?

How lucky we are to have the moon. It seemed that hardly anyone ever saw the sky anymore. Had we all forgotten it was there? All this time below it, we forget. Maybe the sky will leave us someday, then we will be able to realise what it was.

Resting on that table, not getting undressed, not putting on the paper gown, I feared I'd become something sacrificial, but I would not lay myself on this altar. Whatever else I may have been, I was, I knew, not theirs.

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