I imagine myself bathing in a tub of my own blood; it’s only slightly diluted by bathwater. I feel exhilarated yet weirdly tranquil. I close my eyes and listen to the sound of raindrops dancing on leaves. It’s an app on my cellphone. My subconscious tells me this is serenity, and a part of me believes it. The other part thinks I’m f***ing crazy. I slowly raise my head from the bloodbath. The cuts along my body begin to sting and the harsh wind escaping through the cracked door makes my flesh sticky. My dirty locks are conditioned by bloody water. I am dirty. My insides are being reflected on my outsides and I am dirty. I guess there is no escaping this dirt. I begin to claw at my face but I don’t weep bloody poetry as I had hoped. Instead, I am left with vertical red marks along my face and my fingernails are full of gray gunk. Yuck. Someone knocks on the door, maybe my brother, maybe my mother. “Times up!” she says. “Evening pie is ready.” She doesn’t realize that she’s is interrupting my masterpiece this is art what I am creating with my body. “I baked you, a pie,” she says, not understanding that her casual talk is surfacing this intellectual hole I have been digging myself into. I believe a slice of my dirty body is more real than a sweet piece of pie but my mother disagrees. She believes we have to eat the sweets in order to keep our insides pink. Sugar apples touch the soul and turn our anatomy into Valentine’s Day is what she believes. But I know what she does not which is that our insides are red because we are unholy. All bright with purposeful cascade until its evil leaves the body and the cataract transforms into a dark dirt that can be sanded with fingertips. I begin to sand the dirt on my shoulders with my fingertips. “Come slice your pie!” Mama says. ‘Check,’ I think to myself. “Come eat your pie,” mama insists. But that would be cannibalism. Besides, I don’t buy into her fantasy of sweet souls. Mother is persistent so I exit the bathtub and put on my long-sleeved tan t-shirt and nude underwear. My cuts stick to the fabric of my tan t-shirt and my blood seeps through. I walk towards the kitchen table as my tan t-shirt turns into a dark brown t-shirt. I am getting drowsy but the chair is only a couple of steps away so I continue walking. Each step towards the kitchen table is like a step up the ladder in my ditch. Finally I am there, but where exactly? I lower myself onto the chair. It is uncomfortable. Even though consciousness is fleeing my body I can still feel the dark sand on my butt cheeks rub against the chair. Um, the pie smells good and finally it is before my eyes. I hold a knife up to it as if to cut out a slice but before I get the chance to my face falls flat in. I can taste the sugary apples and then I cannot. I can’t tell if I have left my ditch, or if I’ve completely fallen back in. Reality is beyond me.