what you’re left with if you take away the amazing and the super and the man

I brushed my teeth in the shower this morning. Then spent a long steady delirious period of time standing under the heavy stream of pressure. Turning every inch of my skin over under hands. Evaluating the changes time and gravity have claimed since the last time you saw me in the light of day without my clothes. Cursing the extra weight that’s taken shape where the very flat fair expanse used to start just under my ribs, to the belly button, interrupted only by the harsh rise of the hip bones. In clothes, the illusion of a trim figure can still sometimes be achieved. But between my hands and this water and the opaque shower door—there’s nothing to obscure reality. Steam and air and vanilla scented soaps. The thick dull razor. Dangerous along curves impervious to impatient hands. I notice the redness. Swelling. Too late. Hope that the slow stream of blood is a nick. A simple mistake. During the day I ignore the desire to scratch that spot near the back of the calf of my right leg – slightly an inch above the ankle. Imagine it as an imaginary twitch. Like the way I couldn’t stop yawning all day long. But it’s still there. And tonight. When I shed the second skin of my clothes, which never took me anywhere farther than the path that leads from my couch to the office checking for email messages that weren’t there then back to the couch, I confirmed the fear that took hold the way bad news can – burning the places in the back of the nose that we usually don’t realize are a part of the workings of our bodies – a spider bite. Without question. My body is doing what it does – reacting as bodies do to foreign toxins – I’m dreadfully allergic and it’s growing harder and harder to pretend that the throb taking over the entire of my right leg isn’t actually there.