Felicia Zamora

I think about division. How we splice & splice & splice, mentally & anatomically. A cell becomes cells becomes exponential cells. A gorging. Always, our becoming; our something tangled in multiplicity. How the body yearns to rewild from behind muscle & bone. I think of Singh, of an infinite collection of bodyings. I stand at the mirror each morning to introduce my face to my idea of my face. In Maya tradition, the universe split into three realms: celestial vault, earth, & Xibalbá. Western hierarchical thinking of do good to avoid a torturous afterlife or bad deeds = various forms of hell were not part of the ancient Maya belief system. To avoid Xibalbá, you sought a violent death. I wonder if death exists beyond a violent one. The severing of one realm into another. I might be wrong though, to believe the transitory, the tunneling, the emergence from liquid, our life as liquid, back through liquid must mean something. I’ve read the arguments on all births being violent; I disagree. In our pluralist inhabitations, we were never meant to stay wombed. Our once-small bodies designed to pass through, to canal, canal, canal, our way from anaerobic breath to aerobic breath. Outside our mother, we begin deterioration; grow & deteriorate, grow & deteriorate. An inescapable order. Outside the Walgreens parking lot, the nurse’s voice translated for me, The tumor is malignant. The tympanic membrane made of sheer tissue vibrates with each sound wave—a type of memorying that splits & splits. I wonder where I am in the bodying process. In speaking here, I split a little more. A cell becomes cells becomes exponential cells. & cancer infiltrates some of those cells; some of those cells now deadly. & death becomes a bullet point at the very bottom of a (hopefully) very long list. Habitual. I crack my knuckles & think of cancerous lymph nodes. Habitual. I chew my cuticle & think of empty space where breast tissue once lived. Habitual. I bite my lower lip & think of the surgery scheduler asking, Did you fill out the Ohio power of attorney document? Who will make your decisions if you cannot be resuscitated? In constant shed, in passing tunnel after tunnel, rewilding occurs. I find myself counting the bullet points, making lists inside lists. Xibalbá, how much violence is enough violence? In question, I split, then split the split.