Untitled by Marisa Kelly
Last night, I opened the door to my apartment and stood on the front porch. You left a note on my front door for me to follow instructions to be healed of my inherent self. What was written was a request for full embodiment sacrifice, for my own good, to let the flesh of my body be embraced with the sub-zero temperature of a February night. You told me this is necessary to survival: this rejection of self, this risk in the cold. The following was also demanded:
1. Leave my mane of curls wet, to collect precipitation on the strands and alchemy them into ice.
2. Leave my emotional wounds unwrapped.
3. Un-stitch my heart, with the promise you’d stitch it back, only properly.
I exhausted myself, but the shiver of insecurity danced pins and needles up my arm, so I did as was told. I even levitated off the broken wooden slats and spun for you in the air, so you could better examine every detail.
When you saw me in this state, you said, “what’s this for?” and laughed at me. “But your note?” I spoke. You shrugged, and smiled so shrew that I knew I’d collapse and let you control me to dance this dance all over again.
“My prose "untitled" has been rejected a few times. I left it in a folder on my computer, but I returned to it because I think it has an inherent creepiness to it because of the imagery of levitating. I love how different this work is from the rest of my work, which usually takes on the form of storytelling about connection. It's an emotionally heavy read that I wrote in a place of recovery from a bad relationship. I have left it as "untitled" because I want people to interpret it as they wish to.”
Marisa Kelly is a film photographer and writer based in Toronto, Canada.