Illustration by CLAUDINE O’SULLIVAN

SUCCUMB / SURRENDER

Written by Karin Ström by Sandra Myhrberg

I want new streets, emptiness, freedom, filth. I want to pretend to be someone else. Jean Des Esseintes, Kurtz, Aubrey Beardsley. I want to sing like Nico. I want to be a cliché. I left my things at home. Everything that reminds me of who I am. I want to go too far. I want to fall, descend. I want the sweetness of giving in. I want romance, loneliness, boredom. Or just a nice view. Somewhere I can have a conversation with myself.
– My body is not wrong.
– You know what is right, even when you don’t know why. It is not for you to elucidate, only listen to. It evolved.
– I follow the rules of science. I follow the path of least resistance.
– It’s a moral grammar, like the unconscious rules of language, like musicality. It’s coded into your proteins.
– Nature has no conscience.
– But you are not nature.