How Parasites Operate

By Anjali Menon

My mother and Donald Trump had me believe in a strange fiction that real art blooms only from masculine seeds. Starry Nights, Great Gatsby, Led Zeppelin, were all constellations dropped from a giant phallus. I was oriented up in a hole where Maya and Sylvia weren’t allowed to voice. I was just a dreamless girl. No verse of my own. No egg to hatch. No ladder to climb.

So I came down to one noble mission: to find and feed an artist in need.

I knocked on doors, offering my pieces in service. Eventually, I found him – tall, hefty, paint-stained pants. He welcomed me like I was white light, ready to be sprayed onto his empty canvas. I had a purpose now. I would feed the artist.

From day one, I got to work. I curated his inspiration: flowerpots to please his eyes, pumpkin soups to soothe his throat, wet hair to calm his blaze, strong fingers to run through his dreadlocks. Anything to feed his imagination,  top to toe, I dissolved in submission.

He called me his muse. The one who brewed the best coffee. Whose giggles were the first sound of his music. I fed his hunger, some days soft, some days cruel, and called it devotion. I became the shadow making midnight stew surrendering to his insatiable hunger.

Then something happened one Sunday. I had nothing to do but make him dessert for dinner. That’s when it began.

A hum. Silly at first, crawling under my skin. I tried to hush it. Keep it down, I told myself. There’s cream to whisk, sugar to measure, crumbs to collect. But the hum grew louder. I reached for the cream, but the percussion took over. The whipped cream hit the floor like confetti. Then I broke a few bowls for percussion. I was no longer making dessert. I was creating something else.

He walked in, eyes wide. “What is this chaos?”

“This,” I said, “is art.”

It was messy.
But it was mine.
He was furious.
I was alive.

The kitchen, once a sanctuary of order, became a battleground for my hunger. The parasite of an artist in me trespassed into his world. I smeared paint into his brushes, scribbled on his sketchbooks. I was no longer the hands that served. 

I was becoming something too.

Colors bled from me, deep reds, furious blacks, golds with no restraint. Fluorescent lines ruined his outlines. He called it destruction. I called it art.

He shouted. I laughed.

My mother and Donald Trump had me believe that real art only blooms from masculine seeds. But now my colors spill freely. I let the tacky override the sublime. I choose the cracks no one notices. I choose the fire, the passion that howled:  I am something too.

Anjali is a writer and spoken word artist based in Tallinn, Estonia. She travels with her poetry books, performing spoken word sets at slams and local gigs.

This piece was previously published in 100 Subtext Magazine.