Dismember Me by Joanna Rafael Goldberg

In my will, I left my remains to be split evenly by all of my ex-boyfriends. They already had me, might as well take me again.

To Whom It May Concern,

I hereby bequeath my body to my ex boyfriends, under the following conditions:

-I’m still sexy
-I have never given birth
-I never turned 30

If these conditions are not met, please just put the body of the undersigned in a garbage bag and dispose of it in whatever way is most convenient.

Legally yours,

Jackie Spiegel

Respectful of my last wishes, the men who used to fuck me gathered to collect their inheritance, 1/5 of my life’s work. A gift tag on my crooked big toe read “I’m yours. Willingly, Jackie Spiegel.” Albeit oxygen-deprived and stiff, I still looked pretty enough. When I was alive, I danced ballet and made sure to stay hydrated. Treating myself like a rare and expensive harp surely helped preserve my good looks.

In death, a marble slab in a windowless room was the stage. Instead of taffeta, I was draped in a paper sheet. Although rigid and expressionless, the shape of my body flat on the marble was familiar to the cartel of men around me. Had I been swaddled in a quilt, they would have thought I was at rest. In the past, they had all seen me perfectly still, mid-REM, or post little death. Did I look any different to them now? That cadaver was me, just a little later, just a little more dead, closer to festering than ever before.

My beneficiaries agreed to divvy up their loot in order of first to most recent boyfriend. One by one they chose parts, taking turns like they were drafting players for a fantasy football league.

The first, my high school sweetheart, took my tongue and slipped it in a small glass tank. Pink but coated in a foamy grey, the tongue tapped on the glass until the man took it out and cupped it with both hands like a child holds a frog he trapped in the woods. He gave my tongue a little kiss before scolding “Bad tongue. Naughty tongue.”

The second tried to take my tits, but the others protested saying he can’t take both in one turn. Choosing the right breast, he took the right nipple off the jug and pinned it to his lapel like a pink bachelor’s button.

Number three, my boyfriend from my first summer after I turned 21, twirled my long hair into an intricate braid, snipped it off, and sniffed the entire length before knotting it like a tie around his neck. He will never date anyone as pretty as me again.

Fourth in line, who I had  once loved most of all, flicked open the Swiss Army knife I gifted him for Valentine’s Day and punctured the skin around my lips in a dotted line. He peeled them off my face and popped them into his mouth. Chew chew smack like bubblegum. He blew my skin into a taut, shining bubble six inches in diameter.

The last man I ever had sex with was boyfriend five, number four’s childhood friend who started sleeping with me before four had fallen out of love. Five stuck his index finger right into the middle of the swollen flesh balloon that dropped out of four’s mouth, poking a hole in the membrane. The bubble deflated, my lips released air like one last birthday wish. 

They bonded as they dissected me. They shared anecdotes, impressions of my orgasms and pouty bad moods. As a joke, number five puppeteered my skull, chattering the jaw. Snap snap––he popped my lungs. The twin organs flew out of my open ribs and whizzed around the room in imperfect loop-de-loops, leaving wrinkled sacks on the floor. Boy two crushed the last air pocket out of one lung with the toe of his combat boots like he was stamping out a cigarette butt. He shouldn’t have been there––I never loved him, but he didn’t know that.

Body part by body part, they dismembered me until the only thing left on the cold marble slab was my heart, alone and bare and black and blue. Oh, how obvious.

Joanna Rafael Goldberg is a bicoastal writer who lives and works in Los Angeles and New York City. She holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA from The New School. Her published work can be found in Bomb, Queen Mob’s Tea House, and Hotel. www.joannarafaelgoldberg.com