✁ last revisit: 09/30/2025 ✁
✁ content warning: references to sexual assault, self harm, fear of small holes ✁
Spring: Polka dots are trending again 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 so easily in my stomach. The fall before lockdown, my art history teacher took us to watch a screening of a new Yayoi Kusama documentary. Her inspiration was a gravitational pull toward the shape of dots since she was a little girl. She seemed to find comfort in the repetitive round geometry. While a dot is flat and safe, a hole involves eroding something away.
I’ve always had vivid dreams and specific fears. There was this childhood nightmare that took place in a fairy garden setting. The specks and moles on my arms just kept growing- Growing and growing until I looked back down to find I was rotting, decaying, 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. Was it 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. A cigarette burn or two on the hand is societally artistic. I smoke to feel fuzzy, to prove tenacity, to test inhibition. I take care not to blow the smoke in your face, but in a crowded place, I can only try to do my best.