Caesura

At first it was just an itch on the skin, right under the left chest. It itched and I scratched, as it is just as usual, but the itching became more and more annoying. It hardly wanted to stop. Perhaps I should apply cream more often, so that the skin could recover, because the place was from the many scratches already quite red and dried out. So I cremated. It got better, healed, so I became sloppy, and the itching came back.

The skin became more dry. Also the anoint helped no more. The red spot became hard and inaccessible, and one day the skin began to bulge, right under the left breast, growing to a regular tumor. It looked as if I had a third breast. It was disgusting to look like a great pestle. I looked away because I was disgusted with myself. It filled with pus and one day I could not stand it any longer. I took a sharp knife and cut it open. At the sight of the pus I had to surrender. Greasy and smelly, it flopped over my stomach. I tried to scrub it away. The pus was peculiarly sticky, like tar, and the stench had lasted for days, but the bump had disappeared, at least that, but then it began to fill again, until it was as big as before, yellowish and red. Again I cut it open, but this time I did not have to surrender. I get used to it. Even with pus. With time, it became routine, almost. Each time a small cut, each time a short time relief, but the time between one and the next cut was getting shorter, the skin was already littered with cuts. In the meantime, it was only a few hours.

A deep cut, I thought, a caesura, cut it all out, once deeply into it, then it would be gone, forever, only once to bear this pain instead of constantly one small after another. But that was deep, that spread in me like a mushroom braid. Everywhere I felt it, in me, everywhere. How deeply did I have to cut if I wanted to bring this tumor along with all the foothills, forever? How deep did the cut go to free me forever? Was not it like this stubborn weed that stretches its roots large, so it is hardly possible to dig up and eliminate every single one? Was not it just a senseless undertaking to put it? And yet it would be a caesura, for the tumor not only filled with pus, it also exhaled my powers, and with every cut I felt more emptied and more powerless, drained like a dry sponge, thirsting.

A deep cut, if possible, only a deep cut, and it would be over, once and for all, with the tumor, or with me. So I could not go on. Just a deep cut, and I could have done it anyway. I took the dissection knife and set the incision, just below my left chest. Carefully, I cut around the bump. The skin split like warm butter under the sharp knife. How lame the nerves are. I still could not feel anything. So I became bolder. I jerked the knife up to the shaft into my flesh and rounded the inner part of the bump until it fell and my senses faded. Now it met me with full force, completely unprepared, the pain in all its vehemence, swept me like a lightning bolt, followed by the thunder of a benevolent impotence. When I was found, everything was quiet and still, around me and in me. The pain had subsided, and the skin under the left breast was uninjured and more beautiful than ever.