Paper doll

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Paper dolls and mannequins. Smiles sliding down molten plastic.

There is an art to being hollow. I do it better than most.

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For ritual, there must be sequence. An order, a series of events.

So listen, and listen carefully. Like all art, the process is simple, but a single misstep can kill you.

Remove the glass from the paintings that hang on the walls, plaster your windows with film. Shatter the vase of those flowers in your room; throw the shards where they cannot reach you.

Dull your blades and deaden your teeth.

Blunt your pencils, and cut your nails till they bleed.

Now, you are ready.

Close your eyes and listen. Do you hear it? No? Listen harder.

I am nothing. I am nothing. I am nothing.

Say it like a kiss, brushing against your skin, rubbery and vile. Say it with hope, and then say it with despair.

Listen until you can hear nothing else; listen until the words trip over another, like children, like waves, until they become no words at all, but pure sound.

Listen, and you’ll hear the softest of undertones to this; a cadence, a beat, a rhythm.

Lean into this sound, touch it with your trembling fingers, let it fall in pace with the beat of your heart.

You are weightless, you are free. You glide through your life smoothly, yet without grace.

You are paper, a lewd cardboard cutout, made by clumsy fingers and a blunt blade.

Don’t resist, let yourself be cut.

Are you scared? Nervous? Don’t worry; this is all normal.

Isn’t that what you worry about, the loneliness of an isolated experience?

Sweetheart, you have a long way to go.

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Let go of your worries, let go of fear. You have no place to hold them. They will seep through you as easily as water through air.

The light might gleam in a single instant, but close your eyes and look away, for all it will do is blind you. Darkness, in its steady chill, is much more reliable.

You are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing.

Repeat it till you believe. Don’t strain, it’s not that hard. There is an art to becoming hollow, but it’s simple.

Give until you can’t give anymore, and then give away the part of you that resists. Lay your heart bare, let them butcher it with their knives; and smile, for God’s sake, you look so morose.

The heart, you see, is a deceitful thing. Its blood will choke you as fast as it gushes with life. In the end, it’s your heart that will guide the knife to your own throat.

So feed its pain until you can’t feel anything else, until you can’t feel the pain itself. Until it becomes like the sky; ever-present yet unnoticed.

Only then, will you have mastered it. The art of dead life.

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In all the millions of words they weaved, they couldn’t find a string of letters to describe you. How does that make you feel?

Can you feel at all, through the heart that hears only the sound of its hatred?

Don’t cry; there is no word for you, so tell yourself that you are a novelty, you are unique.

Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted?

Photo by takahiro taguchi on Unsplash

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