1919
when i was younger, i used to imagine what it would be like to fall into a volcano, to die a fiery death. it was magnificent in my mind, your last sight would be beautiful reds and oranges speeding at you, and a heat like you've never felt before.
it was with some disappointment that i realised, years later, that it would not be a quick death. your eyelids would burn off, roasting your corneas. the heat would not kill you immediately, and you would feel it cook you. there would be writhing and screaming and the inhalation of the lava, and you would feel the purest agony to exist before you died. thus disappeared my half-baked fantasies.
some time after that, i was sitting in science class when the teacher told us about how an entire town got drowned in molasses. my mind dissolved away from the class and in that moment i could see it. i raised my head and exhaled, and in my minds eye i could perfectly see the warm golden brown encompassing my vision, warmed and lit alight by the sun streaming through it. when i exhaled, the air from my lungs would bubble up slowly in the viscous liquid, captured by the molasses. a moment in time preserved.
in my obsession with the beauty of it, i forgot that the viscosity would not even allow me to open my eyes, that the fluid would blind me, and that the molasses would take up the space in my lungs before i ever got to admire that golden-brown shade. i would be caught, like an insect preserved by amber.
even after that, we were meant to do a dissection in biology - a cows eye. i wasn't quick enough to get a useable scalpel, and needed to change the blade. the teacher told us to wait, if we needed a new blade. i didn't. i didn't know how to replace the blade either, i had never done it before. when i tried to place a new one in, i cut my thumb. i didn't even feel the blade catch my flesh. i was bleeding and i didn't even notice what caused it. i pretended not to notice, put on my gloves, and dissected the eye.
this blade has kept me captivated. i cannot forget it, my mind will not let me. it cut, without me realizing it. it shredded my flesh so beautifully that it only stung until after. this would not burn me from the inside out. this would not drown me. this would be beautiful. perhaps, if in water, i could watch red bloom like ink and not feel the pain until i am too far gone to regret it. perhaps, it could be beautiful. i could be beautiful.