I killed a star today. She was a young woman, once full of dreams and hopes, who had been rotting in my kitchen for years. I first brought her home on a whim of pity, during the wintry month of February. I settled her beside the refrigerator, as if she were the spider plant I had originally searched for at the farmers’ market. In many ways, she had been, and that’s why I could justify taking her and pretending she was a mere possession. Unlike my real plants, I didn’t give her a name. She lay slouched, only changing positions when I cleaned the house. After that first trek when I had to carry her, I didn’t like to touch her. I limited myself to poking at her with my socked foot when I had to dust around her. She was always cold to the touch and had no scent. No appetite either, and no excrement to release. She was better than a baby in that sense.  

Because she was nothing more than occupied space, she made no changes to my routine.  Except for the occasional glance I would give her when I came back from work or when I cleaned around her, I maintained the same life rhythm I had since getting my own place: get up, exercise, leave, return, make dinner, read, sleep. Although we did nothing but co-exist in the same place, it was important to me that she was there. Somehow, she felt like the sister I didn’t have. A missing piece to the puzzle of my—at the time—incongruent life.  

I didn’t particularly enjoy giving massages. Becoming an immigrant in a developed country came with the cost of having to feel, day after day, the fat of other people on my skin. I had to mould it for access to toilet paper and fresh food. I had to rub and pull limbs to experience decent public transport. I had to let customers approach me after a session and make lewd comments about my hands, so I could feel safe in my own home. I escaped hell only to enter another one that wouldn’t have me disembowelled on the streets. I was, thus, unhappy. After years, these thoughts about a better life and the regret I felt towards my situation became simple white noise that surrounded me everywhere I went. There was no point in dwelling on how uncomfortable it made me that old, raisin-like Robert got an erection every time I loosened the knots on his shoulders—it wouldn’t change the fact that I would have to knead his back again next week. I didn’t talk with anyone about it because it didn’t seriously cross my mind, like most decisions made in a distant past. 

Some months after we started living together, something weird began to happen: she began to resemble me. The first sign was her soles. One day, when I came back from feeding the ducks at the pond nearby and was looking through the fridge for a quick meal, I noticed rough calluses on her toes from where they were extended beside the cold appliance, just like mine. I had never done any sport seriously enough for my feet to become coarse, but every time I cut my toenails I saw dead skin clinging to them and felt a debilitating embarrassment wash over me. It was bound to catch my attention, as it was my first time detecting this particular similarity, but I didn’t believe it. I could have sworn that this doll was as polished as someone dead could be.  

Upon reflection, although I didn’t give the initial incident much thought, I waited for more to come—like a latent intuition. But I continued living and withering, paying my bills and dealing with the cockroaches that got in during the summer. One day, in that liminal period of time before the fall leaves started falling, her hair began to change colours. It was her roots at first—from a dirty, fashionable blonde, they turned into a brown that was almost black and a carbon copy of my own curly locks. Curiously enough, it only took a couple of weeks since that first sighting for all her hair to darken to that familiar shade.  

The rest of the metamorphosis rampantly ensued. I soon saw the star tattoo I had gotten with a childhood friend reflected on the same spot beneath her ribs. Her hips got a bit wider, her thighs thinner—her calves more firm. The angular shape of her face softened. She rounded up and lost a bit of that artistic look I had learned to like so much.  

Her chest shrank. She grew body hair—a bit of a moustache. At the last stage of the transformation, I could almost smell my perfume on her. My feelings were uncertain and murky, like water from a polluted lake. It wasn’t so much unbearable as it was upsetting to see my own deterioration every time I went for a glass of water. She had started to look like me, yes, but not like the independent version of myself I had envisioned when I boarded a plane after smelling my mother’s sweat one last time. This hunched, ashen woman couldn’t be me—yet, when I looked at her baby-soft hands, I saw my own labour and effort. The bags under her eyes were a greenish-purple and looked puffy enough to scare off any possible interactions. Her protruding bones betrayed the meals I had skipped to avoid the kitchen that had slowly but surely become our battleground.  

It must have taken a year or two for the full transformation to take place. Before long, I started throwing forks and knives at her when I came home after a particularly harrowing day at work, but I erred on purpose every time, like the sadist who knows how to push the needle enough to hurt, but not damage irreparably. Clients kept coming to the spa, but no amount of Italian coffee or mineral water could have made me relish having food and a roof over my head. Seeing this manifestation of my misery had moved a fibre in me that wasn’t meant to be looked at, much less touched (my wish for fulfillment, perhaps—or the reminder of my dignity).  

***

I believe the embodiment of a woman is having one hidden somewhere dirty inside her house.  The day darkens progressively as the rain clouds the world outside. From my window, I watch cars and pedestrians alike stumble trying to commute on a Monday morning—an urban river trickling down the street. Lightning shines in the sky from time to time. I am writing with my ass on the kitchen tiles, facing the rage of my other self. She still hasn’t moved. Hasn’t spoken. Doesn’t breathe. However, I have sensed her ire building up for some time: streams of lava inside an active volcano. It’s taken time and patience, but I’ve learned about her, like how she needs to starve herself because she likes the haziness it gives to life—how that makes it tolerable. How she cancels plans with potential friends because she’s always scared she’ll slip and start telling everyone the story of a girl who believed too much in herself.  

She sits in front of me right now, in her usual spot beside the fridge. It takes a while—maybe an hour or two—but after all her lethargy, I watch as she slowly drags herself forward. Her long, unkempt nails scrape against the wooden tiles. Her hair is a curly mess, where childhood toys and love letters are entangled. She feels almost faint, but at the same time, she takes up all of the space in the room—all the air I need to tell her that I’m done. It was fun to believe I could have a decent life in a country with a totally different phonology, that I could make myself a name and perhaps go back home and kiss my friends and my family. I truly thought I could do it, but my hands have dripped oil for too long. Now, during this sorrowful morning, I want to say goodbye to all the things that hurt me, including this woman, both wretched and beautiful, who’s been my anchor for so long. If necessary, I will lock her in a damp, foul jailhouse and wait until the physical body she so despises decays.  

She gets closer to me. Her breath stinks of mouthwash and tears. Her hand reaches for mine, a gesture of compassion, of solidarity in this hard task: dying a graceful death. My vocal cords vibrate. The words exit my mouth. I can see them travelling in swirls of anger, of pain, of love. They wiggle and become something outside my own volition. They land on her toothpick arms, on her face. They smear their meanings and leave her body coloured a tortured rainbow of virulent attacks.  

She starts glowing. She’s a shining star. My dying star.