gossamer thin

spreading myself thin, a gossamer, woven and worn towards the form of seamlessness, selfless,  shapeless in my departure, globular is my release. pearlish, genetian spit.  

i have this habit, which feels like a craving, and thus a need, so i cannot call it a choice, which  renders it comparable, in writing, to a shit or sneeze—i have this habit; i sit on a dock by the east  river for roughly an hour and fifteen minutes before every shift; i read, i journal, i stare at the  water, and when i’m done, i walk to the edge lean over the fence and spit, an act of release, i’m  sharing myself, so grateful!, to that which has taken me away, from here, from myself—for  roughly an hour and fifteen minutes.  

you see, during the enlightenment, anatomists scientists philosophers doctors whatever you wish  to call them, they spent much of their time surmising the location of the soul in the body—by  this point they were sure it existed, and because it existed it must have a location, and they tore  apart animals, dogs to be specific, carcasses and corpses, to peek inside, a seek and find, looking  for this hidden home. some theories suggested residence inside bodily fluids; i took this theory  and made it my own, imagining the soul to reside, at least partially, in my spit. humoral,  humorous. a mere affinity i guess, an idea correlated to time and place and speech and sex,  relations and reactions that no longer exist, but still it lasts, persistent, alas, it began, such a  thought.  

here i am, here i writ(h)e, spitting my soul into the east river, emptying myself day by day. 

this ritual is dear to me.
(as they all are)  

though to express my love for water feels cliché, just as much as the very love itself can be, the  love of anything i suppose, but especially this, reluctantly akin to those with “natural”  predispositions, born wealthy enough for boats and lake houses and pools, expressing their love  for water like their urge to travel, the oversimplification of a life worth living, you know the  type, it’s cliché to express proximity to something so obviously alluring, like the color red or a  moonlight sonata, but i will at least dare to call mine different, knowing even that after i explain  it, you might not quite get it, not really, you won’t feel it the way i do, you surely won’t see it,  but that fault is more my own, my lack of ability to take you from here to there, where all this  really is, so far, for, as i was saying, it’s not so simple to explain, and yet it’s quite mundane, in  its occurrence, it’s not the sound of the waves i adore, nor the variety of color shifting with the  tide, nor even that fishy pungence that’s so dead it’s alive, in fact it’s not the water at all, all  alone, no, it’s the way light interrupts this fugitive form, once a gushing liquid now turned  obscure aluminum, fractals of glass, perception cracked and reflected, apprehended then  distorted, i stare and i stare and i stare and i stare, what i know to be in front of me no longer is  and i am torn apart in its wake. the moment hardly lasts, but it lasts, long enough for my eyes to  forget that they are perceiving what my brain calls water and thus i, liminally placed between consciousness and unconsciousness, somewhere inside or around this body, body perhaps all i  am—liminally placed, i am made aware that the reality before me is crafted, merely, by making sense of this exchange of sense. so satisfied i become. the world has finally ruptured. allthatis is  no longer. and thus i forget who and what and how i am.  

but when the water returns—it always does—so too do i; i see the sun reflecting, and i can’t help  from thinking of jumping in; i remember that i can drown.  

and so, you see, i thank the water, these scrambled fragments of me.  

sometimes writing feels like nothing more than this, that^^, a thank you, of sorts, a difference,  the dire need to express it. to separate one self. hence the dissonance between my waking being  and my writing one, the face i wear and the one i create, named—nameless, it’s easy to distinguish one from the other while toiling with paper and screen, such deception, dissipation, personas connected through their dissociation, an entangled mess, mesh, gossamer!, again, a web  of difference>defiance>revolt>revulsion>expulsion>compulsion—the association stops t/here, because next is the act, and after the act is guilt. i spit and i spit and i spit and i spit. emotionally  bulimic, i vomit my nature, only to pick through the muck and scribe it here, how frequent  fragrant and foul, this twisted self cannibalism, the vicious cycle. every day i strive to reduce  myself, full on the smut i make believe.  

kenosis: the self-emptying of christ, the willingness to accept his human form

again, difference; 

if i empty myself, which is so very human, of my self, which is also so very human, what then am i to become?  

along with this spit, so too have i dumped letters, journal entries into these very waters, a way to baptize my self of the lies i choose to document, the truths i refute unto death.  

cliché: water and its historic power of atonement
             water and its inherent power of destruction  

the circle of annihilation and affirmation, of writing and being, becoming and undoing

how easy to diagnose with all these words floating around  

our first christmas together, i gifted ji petri dishes with my humors inside. one, of course, contained my spit  

and as my spit contains my soul, this gift presents a significant problem to metaphysics—that  being the decomposition of spirit—a sight so easy to see, contained in a plastic globe bought on  amazon. 

i think of you, spitting into those waters, as all waters are the same, these waters, and i wonder  what you seek, i wonder what your cycle, your compulsion, your ritual is. i wonder what it is you  want, what it is you wish for.  

i’ve committed this act roughly 312 times; that’s an average of four days a week for a year and a  half; if each globule of spit is roughly eight micro liters (an arbitrary average i yank from goggle  after desperately trying and failing to measure a globule in a glass at home), and there are about .454 liters of water in a pound, meaning my body, if existing entirely as water at 170 pounds,  would be near 77.1 liters, which is 771,000,000 micro liters, to diminish my body completely, i  would need to spit approximately 96,375,000 times; at an average of 208 times per year, it would  take around 46,330 years of life to disappear completely.  

how many deaths come and gone? how many bodies starved anew?  

i do not need this absurd math to let me know that i am no closer to nonexistence than when i began.  

with each expression, nothing changes.  

the only reality is, now, if i dared not to spit, i fear what will come. what began as a playful act of  love, a moment of gratitude, has now become a (ritual) superstition—to the extent that if the globule is not big enough, if i do not see it hit the water, usually due to the interaction of the  wind, i must commit the act again, and again, and again, and again, until satisfied.  

simply, i have condemned myself to reduction  

;and yet, i only feel right, full, if i do just this.

JM Cox is a writer from Louisville, Ky. They received an MFA from Long Island University, and their work has appeared in Archway Editions online journal. Their debut novel Apotheosis is forthcoming with Crop Circle Press in Winter 2026.