loss of self

• I am a national resource
• You must be a worthy vessel
• My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is something made, not born.
• a swamp fenland, where only I know the footing. Treacherous ground, my own territory.
• I am a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear.
• My name isnt Offred, I have another name which nobody uses now because its forbidden…I keep the knowledge of this name like something hidden, some treasure I’ll come back to dig up, one day.
• I feel transparent… as if I’m made of smoke, as if I’m a mirage
• What he is fucking is the lower half of my body
• stiff and straight as an effigy
• We are hers to define, we must suffer her adjectives.
• Back on earth, my mother is part of the crowd now, and I can’t see her anymore
• we might be bundles of red cloth
• this state of absence , of existing apart from the body
• To him I’m not just a boat without cargo, a chalice with no wine in it, an oven- to be crude- minus the bun. To him I am not merely empty
• to keep the core of yourself out of reach, enclosed, protected.
• That is how you can get lost, in a sea of names
• I’ll empty myself, become a chalice