I think I might give myself stigmata like Yshwa’s—scars from a short death, the five holy wounds. Black circles on my hands and feet, a gash of ink on my side. I am holy, a saint, a reborn god. After I died and came back, I tattooed the flat of my chest as I had predicted in Freshwater. I wrote dead thing under the solid triangle on my sternum (the only constant is change) and took marks from the Baron’s vèvè, inking them into the skin above my pectoral muscles. The new tattoos formed an inverted triangle, with the solid original sitting upside down at the apex. I put one of my godnames on my wrist: ekwueme, the one who says and then does. The one who keeps their word, really, the one who turns intentions into prophecies because the words come true. We’ve talked about tattooing as a way of reminding ourselves of what we are. Does embodiment come stained with forgetfulness? If we mark the vessel enough, will it remember what it is?
I know now that I’m required to surrender—to life, to this flesh and all it comes with, to these brief decades of existence—but it’s still a difficult thing to hold on to. It slips through my fingers like water, mercury, blood. I tattoo the word obedient on my knuckles, to remind myself of what I am. I don’t post it on social media because I’m not sure I want to talk about being so deeply religious, not yet. Everyone would assume I’m Christian and I’m not, despite my relationship with Yshwa. I try to pray every night, first to God, the big one, the one that covers the rest with a shadow. Then to my chi, asking it for good things, to remove every evil thing in my heart, to bring me wealth. Then to my deitymother, Ala. Sometimes I talk to the brothersisters and to the Baron. I wrap my arms around Yshwa’s neck and look for home in his skin. What it is like to be a god who worships other gods?
My altar is thrown together and symmetrical. A bottle of palm wine. A white candle on a brass candlestick molded in the shape of a coiled and rearing snake. A tray full of salt and petals and crystals that Katherine put together for me. A ceramic bowl with congealed palm oil. A closed jar of habanero peppers soaking in rum. Some dried rosemary. I wish I could grow yam in my garden, boil it, and offer it to Ala like I used to when I lived in Trinidad. I had a shrine for her outside then, at the base of a large tree where I would sit out in the mornings. I haven’t found the right place for the shrine here yet. I started growing a grove of banana trees in the back, but they’ve gone brown from the frost.
When I was in Trinidad in 2016, I did a ritual to mark myself. I cut vertical lines into my face and packed them with ash. Back in the day, my people used to mark ọgbanje children after they died. There were multiple purposes for this: to identify the child when it came back, but also to alienate it from its brothersisters. Their theory was that once the cohort saw that the ọgbanje could no longer be stealth, could no longer pass for human because its face had been marked, then the cohort would reject the ọgbanje and it would resort to becoming human. What is an ọgbanje without its cohort, after all? Who wants to be alone like that?
But imagine how different things are now, because now is not then. Imagine a cohort that is loyal; imagine a world where an ọgbanje doesn’t have to hide, where it marks itself because fuck a human and a mutilated corpse. What is it like to be so fearless as to advertise openly? The scars on my face were an exercise, but they never raised. I was surprised—scars on my chest always hypertrophy—but I suppose these were too shallow. Instead I tattooed them in, black lines on each cheekbone. I am interested in the way we put permanent reminders into the skin, into the flesh. Does it actually work? I find that my marks seep into me, that I forget what it was like to have a body before the marks, it is as if they have always been there. I adjust so easily.
My first set of knuckle tattoos were split—the word mmụọ on my right hand, a collection of Nsibidi symbols on my left. The mark for python. The mark for the source of the spring. The marks for water, star, bridge, and knife. A bridge between worlds: all freshwater comes out of the mouth of a python; we are knives cutting through the world; and Asughara is a double-edged dagger. An alternate translation for the symbol for star was celebrity, which I liked as a prophecy. I got this set in Vietnam and they sank into my skin and I forgot that they were reminders. Writing this helps me remember.
Maybe I should be meditating on myself, on each thing I’ve drawn into this container of flesh. I am curious about your marks and how they relate to your embodiment, how they serve as reminders, how they hold you while you breathe. I wonder if there is ever going to be enough I could do to my skin that would render me recognizable when I look into a mirror.
After my surgery, the new scars marked my chest in raised and jagged lines. The surgeon is injecting them with steroids to flatten them out. Their topography doesn’t bother me; I’m just curious to see what they’d look like flat, and the steroid shots are free. The main scars are orbited by smaller scars, scattered constellations. I’m not sure what caused those—stitches, perhaps, as they migrated and dissolved within my chest. I have marks in the crook of both my elbows, scars that really shouldn’t be there, so of course that makes me only more interested in why they showed up. They’re from the IVs in the emergency room after my resurrection in LA, small brown smudges darker than the surrounding skin.
All these marks add up to a map of sorts: different phases of embodiment like a shifting moon, different places, different hurts. I am looking forward to my final death, and what the body will look like then, how the map will have changed. I imagine it expanded, thickened, lost in folds. I think I will have them burn it then, turn all my marks into ash. They were mine; they should be gone when I am. This body was a home that took me decades to surrender to, and now I am decorating it with a different kind of intention, as if it’s a weapon, because it holds my spirit.
Our conversations are a gift, to be able to speak as I think, without translation, knowing that I am seen and heard and understood. I hope this letter reaches you well. Give my love to Connor.