The Morning Visitor, at Night
(tw// sa)
This is a personal essay based on my favorite artwork titled “The Morning Visitor” by Dino Buzzati. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I saw it months ago.
I stumbled my way home from a party at a stranger’s apartment. I was drunker than I intended to be, of course— I liked to drink when I was sad— and that night, I was so sad I just wanted to die.
“I just want to die,” I told my friend.
She giggled and burped. “No you don’t,” she said, “you just get really sad when you’re drunk.”
I paused to think about the implications of possibly always feeling sad. It was very dismal. I felt tortured.
“I feel tortured,” I said.
“Well,” she said, and then she paused. “That sucks, dude.”
I laughed because there wasn’t anything else to do. I laughed because I didn’t realize how cold it was and I was wearing a bra as a top. I let out a puff of smoke and it seemed to freeze in the air. It looked like breath. We both laughed at that, too.
We laughed until we didn’t, because suddenly he was standing there, and he was staring at me.
It happened quite often. When your assaulter lives three apartments away from yours, you can’t really escape him. He’s always walking to class or to his job or to get a slice of pizza. He always looks into your window to see if you’re sitting on the couch, hopefully staring back.
I called my cheating ex-girlfriend to talk about it because she was the last person besides him to see me naked.
“I feel tortured,” I told her. It was a running theme, I’d noticed, in my conversations.
“I still love you,” she said, which was also a running theme.
“I know,” I told her, “but I feel like my skin is melting.”
“I can come hold you,” she offered.
“I’m good,” I said. “I just don’t want to live inside my skin.”
“But I love your skin,” she said. “I miss your skin.”
After we hung up, I slapped my own face so hard I bruised and flung my phone across my small bedroom. The sound reverberated against all the walls of my even smaller apartment. I listened to my roommate get up from his desk, open his door, and peer out.
“You okay?” he called.
“I’m good,” I said.
He shut his door. I wanted him to open it again and hug me, though we’d never hugged before. I was sure he would, because he loved me. I knew this because watched out for the sound of my phone hitting the wall we shared. It happened more often than I’d ever admit. I discovered I liked to make noise when someone was there to listen. I decided that listening is love.
I tried to take a shower but the proximity to my own skin, and the thought of having to live inside of it for the rest of my life until I die, felt too heavy of a burden to bear.
So I tried to write, but my short story fell flat. The characters all felt tortured. I emailed my professor and begged for an extension.
“Workshop makes me nervous,” I wrote. “Please give me another week. I’m adjusting my anxiety medication.”
Before I sent it, I CC’d my therapist.
My professor responded within minutes and told me he was disappointed in me.
“I miss you,” I told my sister over the phone. “I’m a failure, and everything kind of sucks right now.”
“Mom’s making pork chops for dinner,” she said. “It sucks over here, too.”
I asked her to send me a picture of our dog. The sight of his face made me cry.
“Are you crying?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Yeah you are,” she said back. “I can hear you.”
I scrolled through my small selection of dating apps. I was supposed to meet up with a lesbian from New Jersey; they wanted to drive all the way to me. I thought of all the money in tolls and gas. I shivered.
They were handsome, though, in a way I’d never seen before. Clandestinely, maybe a little obscenely. And their smile was soft, and bright, and a certain slant of light I didn’t know if I could handle without squinting.
I ignored their texts and placed my phone beneath my pillow. I made my bed and pulled my unwashed hair into pigtails. I cleaned off my eyeliner and stared at myself in the mirror.
“I feel tortured,” I told her.
I walked into the dark living room. I shut the blinds. I didn’t look out the window because I was sure he was looking back up at me from the sidewalk.
“You’re torturing me!” I shouted, but only in my mind, because the sound of my own voice startled me more than his ever could.
He probably wasn’t even there, and he probably didn’t pay that much attention to me to begin with. I was probably imagining his empty pupils looking at me, too, because sometimes they’d turn into my grandfather’s. Sometimes I could never tell the difference.
I sat on the couch and let myself fall open. I let the eyes stare into me. I took a photograph of my naked body. I removed all the seductiveness from it. I was a little girl grown so tall.
As fresh rain fell outside, and the roof leaked earth, I sat on the couch and opened. I think I fell asleep that way.
This is so incredible
kay, this is so well done!