Jessica Cohn
Disembodied
We get used to things. I’m growing used to my light-boxed life among faces, their framed likenesses. Life lived in gallery view of noses, foreheads, potted plants, planted books. How our faces go dark after hours, like when the bag is placed over the head before the guillotine cuts loose. How our own electric bodies can be muted.
Do you remember how it was to sit at the table, full-body politic, tealights aglow, goblets shimmering? It was lovely. Even when smelling garlic on someone’s breath. Or, a woolen not quite dried. Or, the odor of ardor. Despite the spills.
Where does the soul go when zooming? I don’t mean to change the subject, but, a half million dead this half year. And counting. I’d like to know. Being in a body is its own antibody, I think. We learn too late what’s sacred: Take this and eat of it. Do this in memory of me. We crave what is out-of-body, the sweet
spasm, the sacred syllable, the pill or potion for fog or serotonin’s rush, the posture to unplug chakras. We’ll work our way out. Follow harsh regimens to burn flesh away. Oil up in fussy smells. All to avoid what is, the body of us all.