My fingers, long and elegant, move to a rhythm I have yet to understand. My left finger touches my right finger and runs a nail along its partner’s side. The flesh I feel is supposed to be my own. As I watch my thin appendages, however, I sense that something or someone who is not me controls how they shift and stir. Sometimes, the fingers grapple and wrestle with one another. When they scratch and draw blood, I want to look away.

But my eyes, too, seem to move without regard to my desire. They stay glued to my bleeding fingers. And then they bug and jolt, leaving me reeling. Shutting my eyes that are not mine, I turn inward. Disconnecting from my warring fingers, I hang in a space that belongs to neither fingers nor eyes. I conceive a surreality where I am in charge. In my mind, I fly there.

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