Evil Genius

Here was a man who had shot a bullet at me. Who had rammed me into a tree. Who had called me disgusting, many times. Who had strong armed me casually whenever he thought I needed to be taught a lesson…and who had raped me a time or two-my mind, unconvinced, interrupts me here to say, “Oh Celia, don’t catastrophize; rape is such a judgmental word, when you know he never left bruises…

Subjectively, I knew that the Crab Queen, Bringer of Chaos and Ruler of All Beasts of Land and Air and Sea, would one day emerge from those choppy depths. On that day she would claim me as her kin.

I tried to think optimistically, but nobody came. Time began to behave so strangely. Wait and see. Times like these come for us all. The particulars will be different, but times like these will surely come for you, and when they do, there will be no pulse in the world. No heartbeat. Seconds and minutes won't behave. One moment you'll be living through staccato time where everything feels sharp and bright and fast, and the next you'll be stuck in geologic time and you'll have turned to stone.

Something was springing inside of me—spring flowers, the sound of rain, a friend who made me smile. My body, moving through space. An unraveling of every clenched muscle from all the years I’d spent tensing myself into shapes that kept me safe.

For sure I didn't want to live the same life I'd been living. I craved revolutionary changes in my life. Violent changes, even. I felt like I was exercising a new muscle in my body. My body began to conform to my new way of thinking. Each day my body grew more loose-limbed and intuitive. It grew more sensitive to things. Trivial things at first, like the way my clothes felt against my skin as I walked along. Then larger things, too, and larger-than-large things—profound things, even—like the boundless sky at dusk when work was done.