All Fours

I was a "product" until the house started to scream.

untitled 157 (2024), by lumierebelge, inspired by a photo by Kishin Shinoyama.

“Watch me crawl on hands and knees

And scratch at the door of heaven.”

- Florence + The Machine

​I am staring at the painting. The tiger is breathing, I think. She senses, surely, that I am a rabbit-hearted girl.

Then, a jolt. A sound immensely loud, a domestic apocalypse, enough to wake the dead and pull my grandmother from the soil. It’s the water heater. It is screaming.

​I don’t know how the smell evaded me until now: the scent of scorched ozone, strong and thick. It trespasses my nose, engulfing every sense, clinging to the walls and the furniture. The scent of a routine pushed too far.

The whole house is boiling. The pipes reached their limit, and the water is cascading across the floor, drowning the life I built on level ground.

The tiger follows. She is breathing down my neck. Does she want to eat me? Does she want my heart's blood? Does she want to possess me?

​I am paralyzed between the catastrophe of the pipes and the wild, yellow-eyed hunger at my back. I wonder who will take me first from this temporary world: the heater or the wildness.

The water rises to my knees, and the struggle becomes physical. I stare at my immobile hands.
​I remember when you told me I should serve. And in this serving my hands are still mine. And after this serving they would still be mine. And all this serving of others is for me, actually, for my benefit. But "my benefit" in your eyes is to serve someone else in the future. So in reality, my hands were never mine. They just serve someone, then another.

The tiger is licking me now. Tasting the salt of me, perhaps. The water reaches my waist.

​I was never in love with life, not like the others. And this lack of love is what preserved some of my morality. Compared to them, I'm an angel; compared to heaven, I'm a devil. The truth is, I feared death only for the after of it, not because I truly loved this breathing, insignificant life.

Here I am, in the water, a reflection staring at the being that is itself. A pretty face. Warm complexion. Golden-brown hues of hair. Yet I always feel lacking. Bunny teeth. Ugly feet. I spent my life buying products to look more youthful and alive, to mask the erosion of sadness. Is the “uncanny valley” the new beauty standard? I never saw it as such. In the end, I would rather be me.

As the water fills my lungs and she lunges, pressing her weight against me, every standard dissolves. The water is at my chin. Her fur is matted with the rising tide, her eyes reflecting a world that does not care about my hands, my servitude, or my reflection.

The heater’s shriek is deafening, a final, oxidized death rattle. The "I" is fracturing. My vanity, my labels, the "product" I made of myself. It is all being washed away by the scorching, rising water.

And in this final, suffocating clarity, I realize: I do not need to be served, and I do not need to serve. I just need to be.

The tiger opens her jaw. The water fills my mouth. And finally, I am entirely, terrifyingly, myself.