Diannely Antigua REMAINDER My life is a meditation on excess baggage. I pay 240 euros to bring back a genuine Italian leather bag from Florence. And I tell myself it’s worth it. I tell myself they’re worth keeping around, the men I collect like teeth in a mother’s drawer. They are all versions of children, the way they looked at me wide-eyed, and I looked too, already aware of the future. I exchange parts of my body for their bodies. The pubic hair I shave in preparation clogs the drain. I am the patron saint of leftovers, the spaghetti grows a gel of starch in the fridge, the pesto crusts a ring around the jar. I’m interested in the temperature I must reach to be acceptable. The Bible speaks ill of the lukewarm, spewed out of the mouth of god, and I weep on my kitchen floor like I’m mourning a death but it’s just my own. There will be a reckoning, a let go. So I practice the art of multiplication, then division again. I create and uncreate me, to take up space then to disappear. It reminds me of the time I learned about meiosis, the split and repeat and I feel so naked, only a few cells deeper than conception. I want to find the true center, rip towards the outside.