TAXIDERMY OF THE SELF
- Jun 6
- 1 min read
By Sid Wilson
Knit your entrails together,
Wrap them around your needles and tug
to craft yourself into something new
that forgets what imperfection feels like.
Compress yourself against the inner edges
Of the shape you used to be.
Fix the insides first.
Cleanse the pollution of nerve tissue,
unrefined organ matter.
Women made by male-manufactured belief,
to make you believe it too,
and it must be true because lies are ugly,
and they are beautiful.
You want to be beautiful like them but
beauty is to suffer, and will you scream
when others break the glass ceiling
too high for you to reach?
A mirror is a mirror is a mirror
and it reflects back the dropped stitches,
your tapestry of flaws you unpick one by one
this skin from flesh and bone to recreate yourself.
To be baptized in embalming fluid.
A concerto of zips and tears
from fleshing and skinning and stuffing
emerge from the calliope of your body a
and is this the sound that monsters make?
So snap-crack your bones and unravel
the yarn of your body.
Pull it loose to become a tangle of tendon and sinew,
as you bleed manufactured flowers.
Wait to be reshaped into something
that is beautiful enough to be called truth.
In futile hope of serendipity.
And when perfection falters, alters, changes what it means
to be your best self as the glass-ceiling rises once again,
patched with Plexi-glass and double-glazed over,
begin again.