#eight bites

[fieriframes]

[AND THE TANG OF THE BLUE CHEESE. YEP, YEP. I CAN SEE WHY THE BLUCY IS SO POPULAR. I MEAN, THAT'S ABOUT EIGHT BITES--]

[reverie-quotes]

Will I ever be done, transformed in the past tense, or will I always be transforming, better and better until I die?

— Carmen Machado, "Eight Bites," Her Body and Other Parties

[the-final-sentence]

'I didn't know.'

Carmen Maria Machado, from “Eight Bites”

[cmacaulays]

“As they put me to sleep, my mouth fills with the dust of the moon. I expect to choke on the silt but instead it slides in and out, and in and out, and I am, impossibly, breathing.”

— Carmen Maria Machado, “Eight Bites” from Her Body and Other Parties

[sept12-2021]

[cmacaulays]

“I am transformed but not yet, exactly. The transformation has begun—this pain, this excruciating pain, it is part of the process—and will not end until—well, I suppose I don’t know when. Will I ever be done, transformed in the past tense, or will I always be transforming, better and better until I die?”

— Carmen Maria Machado, “Eight Bites” from Her Body and Other Parties

[cmacaulays]

“I have dreamt of inhaling underneath water and this is what it feels like: panic, and then acceptance, and then elation. I am going to die, I am not dying, I am doing a thing I never thought I could do.”

— Carmen Maria Machado, “Eight Bites” from Her Body and Other Parties

[wisflight]

“I will open my mouth to ask but then realize the question has answered itself: by loving me when I did not love her, by being abandoned by me, she has become immortal.

She will outlive me by a hundred million years; more, even. She will outlive my daughter, and my daughter’s daughter, and the earth will teem with her and her kind, their inscrutable forms and unknowable destinies.”