Hi Erica, Thank for your prompt and your wonderful class! This is my page in the coloring book on invisible illness:
PORTRAIT FROM THE INSIDE
After all, coffee is legal. That’s why.
My skin used to be made of a milk film. My mother would complain about the bluish milk in Belgium and hence about my complexion. It made me angry. You see, the milk I was giving her here was skimmed. It would have been bluish anywhere.
Now, after years of sleeplessness drowned in a black thick liquid, my skin has become a thin layer of soft tin. If you look closer, you see coffee vessels transpire. Fish scale sized coffee-coloured dots emerge here and there, shoulders, legs, temples. The dermatologist said it looked like mycosis. Mushroom, in other words. For sure, she meant porcini mushrooms. She did not know my staple food was coffee, not mushrooms neither pork. Let alone fish.
After my mom visits, her nostril hair are roasted. When she leaves, a layer of lemon and coal dust covers her tongue. But nothing changes outside.
I live on coffee because of insomnia. Not the other way around. The other day, I got a bit desperate. A whiff of short temper. The green Swiss knife the Swiss friend brought over from the Alps as a souvenir was at hand as always. It has a white engraving singing ‘Scharpf und spitz’ that sounds like a tune for a romantic ballad. Sometimes, I use it to open the blue-red Italian coffee tins, when, their top-pulling rings break off. It takes a little knife to cut a thin layer of tin. In the end of the day, an opening in a shape of a wide grin cut across my ankle. Yellow hypertrophied salmon eggs peeped out, like an army of soft bladder stones. Then I got scared because a great coffee fountain shot up from the grin.
I thought how ugly I looked from the inside. Fat and coffee.
The greying towel soaked brown. When I came back from the emergencies, I made myself a cup of coffee—a ristretto.
Thanks for posting, Marika! There is so much vivid, defamiliarized imagery here it is hard to pick my favorite. So many colors it is deliciously painterly.
The opening bluish milk film is genius! I get the sense of taste there too.
You also have a talent for balancing imagery with "telling" lines like "I thought how ugly I looked from the inside. Fat and coffee." This confession feels profound because we've been in the "sacred carnality" of the speaker's world. Such a strong voice too.
I LOVE the idea of a page from a coloring book on invisible illness. Is this piece describing a particular illness?
Hi Erica, Thank for your prompt and your wonderful class! This is my page in the coloring book on invisible illness:
PORTRAIT FROM THE INSIDE
After all, coffee is legal. That’s why.
My skin used to be made of a milk film. My mother would complain about the bluish milk in Belgium and hence about my complexion. It made me angry. You see, the milk I was giving her here was skimmed. It would have been bluish anywhere.
Now, after years of sleeplessness drowned in a black thick liquid, my skin has become a thin layer of soft tin. If you look closer, you see coffee vessels transpire. Fish scale sized coffee-coloured dots emerge here and there, shoulders, legs, temples. The dermatologist said it looked like mycosis. Mushroom, in other words. For sure, she meant porcini mushrooms. She did not know my staple food was coffee, not mushrooms neither pork. Let alone fish.
After my mom visits, her nostril hair are roasted. When she leaves, a layer of lemon and coal dust covers her tongue. But nothing changes outside.
I live on coffee because of insomnia. Not the other way around. The other day, I got a bit desperate. A whiff of short temper. The green Swiss knife the Swiss friend brought over from the Alps as a souvenir was at hand as always. It has a white engraving singing ‘Scharpf und spitz’ that sounds like a tune for a romantic ballad. Sometimes, I use it to open the blue-red Italian coffee tins, when, their top-pulling rings break off. It takes a little knife to cut a thin layer of tin. In the end of the day, an opening in a shape of a wide grin cut across my ankle. Yellow hypertrophied salmon eggs peeped out, like an army of soft bladder stones. Then I got scared because a great coffee fountain shot up from the grin.
I thought how ugly I looked from the inside. Fat and coffee.
The greying towel soaked brown. When I came back from the emergencies, I made myself a cup of coffee—a ristretto.
Thanks for posting, Marika! There is so much vivid, defamiliarized imagery here it is hard to pick my favorite. So many colors it is deliciously painterly.
The opening bluish milk film is genius! I get the sense of taste there too.
You also have a talent for balancing imagery with "telling" lines like "I thought how ugly I looked from the inside. Fat and coffee." This confession feels profound because we've been in the "sacred carnality" of the speaker's world. Such a strong voice too.
I LOVE the idea of a page from a coloring book on invisible illness. Is this piece describing a particular illness?
Let's say that here that invisible illness is insomnia.
Ok! I might make that clear in the title. It sounds like coffee is the "prescription"? So a possible title might be "A Prescription for Insomnia."
Beautiful ❤️
<3
Thank you, Beth ❤️