✁ last revisit: 06/07/2025 ✁
✁ content warning: references to sexual assault, fear of small holes ✁
Polka dots are trending again this spring, and there are definitely more moles on my arms than before. The time has come for my childhood to dictate the trend cycle, but nostalgia doesn’t sit easily. In high school, my art history teacher took us to watch a screening of a new Yayoi Kusama documentary. She talked about being drawn to the shape of dots since she was a little girl. She seemed to find comfort in the repetitive round geometry.
I’ve always had vivid dreams and specific fears. There was this childhood nightmare that took place in some sort of fairy garden setting. The specks and moles on my arms just kept growing. They kept growing and growing until I realized I was rotting and decaying and fading away. Since then, a dreadful mental itch anytime I saw little holes packed together. I still can’t bear to look at the flesh-like ones.
It’s an itch not too different from the cerebral ache the first few times I attempted in ways to be penetrated. Before I knew how to sustain love. Before testosterone and I fucked a different world into existence. Friends and strangers’ fingers: not something I really wanted, but it was, because I just wanted what I thought you wanted. The friction makes me feel fuzzy and like I’m pulling myself apart. But can you fall apart when you’re not together?
Someone needs to be sacrificed at an altar of uncontrollable urges, and it needs to be a spectacle. It was always supposed to be me. A life full of holes leads to life as a hole, leads to a lung and brain full of holes. Cigarettes as socially accepted self-harm? I smoke to feel fuzzy, to prove tenacity, to test inhibition. It’s my turn to tear myself apart, as if I haven’t found enough ways yet.
This is my little world of hurt, but it doesn’t hurt anymore. I take care not to blow the smoke in your face, but in a crowded place, I can only do my best.