Seppuku

Only my viscera are honest, W. decides. Only there, deep inside my body, buried under layers of fat, is there anything like honesty. In a way, it's comforting, W. says, although it doesn't make me any easier to be around. That there's a kind of internal limit to my pretension.

You're not going to get away with it, that's what my stomach says. I'm not going to let you get away with it. That's my curse, W. says, and my judgement. It's what the samurai realised when they committed ritual suicide, their entrails glistening in the sun.

Sincerity belongs to the guts, W. says. And what of my terrible purgations – what of that terrible voiding that is like a parody of seppuku? It'll never come to an end, will it?, W. says. It's the double of my endless logorrhea, a trail of shit that runs along every line I write.