‘We are word made flesh. But we make words. So we can make ourselves anew.’
‘What if I go to my own veins, the origin stories I think precede me, what if I go there and say that all the blood that ever spilled can now become paint? What then? And by then I mean now.’
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Dub, xi
horripilation
what if we are whispering stories through your skin? y(our) stories, y(our) kin. we have been erased in almost every way but this. listen. we hear when you attend. sometimes, like obey, like to a calling. but we won’t insist you pause, turn, notice, still. not with words. we were planted before your will. before. below your skin. we just know how to be this way, shake up what is sleeping, tighten the flesh and make you shiver. the hairs we shock straight like birches. we taught you how to hear us and you’ve forgotten what you learned.
some people call them goosebumps. or gooseflesh. Horripilation, from Latin ‘horrere’, to stand on end, and ‘pilus,’ hair, and yes, this is how your word ‘horrible’ came to be. of terror. cutis anserina. human beings’ skin pimples when the hypothalamus sends a message through the sympathetic nervous system, telling it to pull the skin’s hair erector muscles taught. they call it adrenaline. it makes hair follicles jump up above the surface of the skin. you heard right. there are muscles made just to merge with nerves to erect hair all over the human body. each. hair. rooted. in. a. miniature. muscle. scientists say that plumping up hair this way kept our ancient speciekin ancestors warm in freezing atmospheres, storing more air between hair. that it intimidated predators and enemies away. porcupines, incidentally, work the same way. and the big cats. you are not unique. we are horrible, yes. but not in that way. your pores turn towards what we are trying to say.
Sarah Amsler 