Why I’m dry tonight and every night

by Lucy Zhang

Mother keeps sending me dance videos. They always have these slim dancers, hair tied neatly in a bun or slicked back in a ponytail, looking so put together as they maintain control over their limbs. Even though the dances are slow, without all the flips and on-the-nose expressiveness of modern dance, without the flaunting of flexibility or fouettés of ballet, the arm movements and limb angles manage to come off figurative and intricate. And the dances always have the craziest names, like they’ve been stolen from ancient Chinese poems: South of the Colorful Cloud, The distant mountains of dreams, Mother in the candlelight. “You used to dance when you were little,” mother says. “It’s good to still do an exercise that has some art form, that brings you joy.” Back then, I’d practice wherever I found a large, open area. When we used to visit Mei Dong to restock on pork bones and salted duck egg, I’d zigzag through the long, empty aisles of the store, rapidly stepping from heel-to-toe, each stride no longer than my foot, imagining I was gliding–floating like the cloud surfing Monkey King.

“It’s not efficient,” I say. “I like HIIT. Gets all the exercise I need in the least amount of time.” My burpees and jumping squats make for an unsightly endeavor: a lock of hair escapes my ponytail as I pull my knees to my chest and jump; strands stick on my forehead and get in my eyes; I pant heavily, audible over the music, like a sweating dog; my limbs flail like an unraveled sponge loofah dangling on the shower caddy. I consider my body a vessel of infinite entropy. A few days later, my belly feels a bit lighter and I think I’m burning fat but really, it’s my liver that’s gone. A week later, I lose my small intestine. My large intestine follows suit. My hair recedes into my skull, as though dead skin cells, too, could be consumed as fuel.

After we shower, we touch each other like we’re worn, Shirley Temple dolls re-packaged side by side, once new and loved. When you touch my clitoris with the same tenderness of a newborn grasping a finger, I feel like a tapering mass of ice dangling from the inside of a cavern. The last trickle of water saved from its fall, immortalized as an icicle. As I lay naked beside you, I ask you to stick tiger balm pain relief patches on my aching back. They make me smell like pungent herbs, like old grannies practicing Qigong before anyone is awake. I say, I can still make you feel good, I can still act. It’s just that my body needs to conserve energy. I don’t control its allocation of resources. I’m nearly out of organs to cannibalize. I feel a bit off. I try incorporating more upper body exercises in a sad attempt to achieve that elusive inner balance. The type mother says will be destroyed if menstruating women drink ice water. And as I push-up-to-plank, I watch one of the dance videos. Oh, I think as I watch the dancer’s face–her small, red lips, her traced eyebrows, the corner of her eyes dragged upward with eyeliner. She’s smiling for the duration of the entire song. It’s a little unnerving.

LUCY ZHANG writes, codes, and watches anime. Her work has appeared in Atticus Review, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Pidgeonholes, Jellyfish Review, and elsewhere. She is an editor for Heavy Feather Review and assistant fiction editor for Pithead Chapel. Find her at kowaretasekai.wordpress.com or on Twitter @Dango_Ramen.