The body houses all. Its organs are not capable to dividing the precious and vile. The skin cannot filter out flaws, cannot leave behind what is crystalline and expel what is already breaking. This flesh, this blood, these limbs, each space is stretched taut with the gore and the glory of our souls.

It betrays us, the body, with its strange aptitude for seeming unsullied, during the long years it often takes for signs of our ailing to reach its surface. And when the body is lithe and graceful, adorned in glittering raiment, smooth-skinned and diamond-eyed, capable of pushing otherworldly song through the chords in its throat, and constantly erupting with laughter, it is downright deceptive. It is a projector, casting aspersions on our concerns and flickering out a performance that fools us all. I am fine, it says. I have overcome all that’s ugly inside me. I am exactly…