Metamorphosis

Dearest L,

This March, as you know, the tip of my finger was ripped off by the bathroom door hinge at the Stonewall Inn. Blood dripped steady like mercury from a shattered glass thermometer. I laughed in shocked irony, then cried out in drunken agony. My friends hailed a cab and, as politely as they could given the panic overriding their inebriation, stated our need for the nearest emergency room. The taxi, now a makeshift ambulance, zipped in and out of traffic as legally as it could. Upon our arrival, and woozy with pain, you were the only thing on my mind, as you tend to always be. But my need for you was akin to an infant’s reliance on their mother. The ultimate, omniscient, living, breathing, god and tranquilizer.

I sent you a muffled voice memo as I sunk into a percocet induced cushion, giggling, despite the horrors and my crimson stained tights, about how my ring finger would miraculously grow back like the limb of a peachy starfish. Without my asking, because you know how much I hate to impose even on the person I would consider to be, the very cliché, “love of my life,” you booked the seven hour train trek from Burlington to Manhattan. Four lidocaine shots, six sutures, seven emergency room hours, and several

ounces of antibiotics later, I fell into a coma-like sleep on top of my duvet with my limbs spread like a crime scene chalk outline.

You appeared to me in my shoebox bedroom. A hybrid between prince charming and the over-exposed, sparkling white horse from Twin Peaks that materializes in Laura Palmer’s living room. You pressed your lips to my forehead, only removing them once my eyes could fully process your presence. Producing simultaneously a girlish giggle and a tear to my eye, you are the right person at the right time.

Not that I yearn for you to experience pain, but we’re not on the same playing field anymore. Your concern for my severed ring finger skyrocketed you towards new heights amongst my parents and friends. Previously labeled as the first person I’ve involved myself with who isn’t an “emotional terrorist,” (my friends’ words, not mine) you are now known as family and the top contender, in my mom’s opinion, for my hand and your last name. For as long as I’ve sketched my dream matrimony into various pink sequined diaries, you’ve envisioned yourself in a body that isn’t a betrayal of your perception of self.

On the other side of the country, Alaska cradled you. As you grew, shifted, and morphed into a body that betrayed your sense of self, you felt as isolated as the permanently frosted mountain tops. Distant, cold, alone, and acres away from the ground on which your parents stood. Which was that you should never alter gods' work. “He creates with an intention truly no one understands;” You, least of all. Even all the way up on your mountain top, you glimmer and shine with a supernova-like brilliance. An intelligence, a

mind constantly alive, that stops at nothing to understand everything, but most of all yourself. Despite it all, you survived.

Although you are now safe from the religious grasp of your upbringing, on occasion you ask me if I would still love you as eternally as the core of the earth, even if you must shed skin, blood, and muscle in order to know yourself. I am only a writer, who wishes she could be your surgeon. I will love you more, like the first blooming forget-me-not after the most harrowing winter.

Even after your mountain landslides and shifts shape, my devotion to you will never cease, for you are still the rock that anchors me. I look forward to worshipping each scar that brings you closer to yourself. It is an understated honor to bear witness to your physical metamorphosis and bathe in your long awaited, prayed for, and earned euphoria. As your skin heals, I want you to do nothing but smile into the mirror. Allow me to reciprocate your adoration for one million lifetimes, my love.

With my whole heart,

E

Erin Norton is a professional muse and outspoken lesbian currently based in NYC. With a BFA in creative writing from Emerson College under their belt, they are a blog writer for Dreamworldgirl Zine and freelance prose reviewer for Another Chicago Magazine. You can find her poetry in Ghost City Review and Version(9)Magazine. Semi regularly, she post essays on her Substack: erin’s diary.

Insta: @erinsdiary.pdf

Artwork credit: Finn Brown