Girl Made of Soap

The hands that touched me at birth left marks that never faded, rubbed away at my curves

before they had even formed. The kiss my mother planted at the top of my head never truly

washed away, her lips indented on my cheek.

I rubbed off on anyone I met.

My skin was slick as stone, my body opaque and white and wrong. My parents realized

quickly they couldn’t touch me, or my form would warp and my body would fade, their touches

forever marked on my surface.

I learned to walk on my own, how to move without my feet grinding into moisture. I

learned never to be near water, lest I foam and bubble and dissolve. I kept myself pure, separate

from society.

It’s a sad life, to fade away each time someone touches you.

I can’t survive in a crowd, or a lady passing by could mush my arm into pulp. I can’t fall

in love, because kissing would make my lips smooth out. I don’t remember the last time I felt

solid flesh.

This distance is the reason I spent most of my life in my parents’ house, in the small blue

bedroom I’d slept in since I was a child. Unadorned, the space was nearly bare but for the bed. I

don’t leave often.

I never have to eat, so sometimes I sleep for weeks. I have no one to talk to but my

parents, so half the time I don’t quite remember how to speak. I can’t write or my fingers will

mould around the wood of the pencil. I can’t read because the pages smudge under my fingertips.

There are so many things I can’t do it’s hard to remember what I can do.

To be made of soap is to live your life carefully, for if you live it to the fullest you will

fade in a matter of hours.

I leave those I do touch cleaner than they were before, taking their grime into my own.

My mother’s calluses from years of needlework, the dirt under my father’s fingernails from his

construction job. Some of it still sticks to me from long ago, like little shining specks of glitter

pressed into my palms, I can see the swirl of my dad’s fingerprint on the back of my hand, in the

way his human dust leaves a perfect spiral behind.

I have learned how to step so lightly that the universe doesn’t know where I tread, so that

whatever creator made me cannot feel my presence, I stay unknown. I stay silent.

To be made of soap is to know you are an abomination. Something inhuman, as much as

your parents say otherwise.

To be made of soap is to realize the man you’ve been staring at could be the end of you.

To be made of soap is to realize love is not meant for you, yet you want it so dearly.

You want to feel what it’s like to hold on so tightly to someone that your body is left with

the imprint of their being, their dust and dirt and love and sweat and life. You want to know what

it is to feel rain on your skin without the fear it will cut a hole through your skull.

When it started to rain on that gloomy July day, I was standing outside. I felt the water

groove along my head and dig into my scalp, felt overwhelming panic and then relief as it slid

harmlessly down my forehead, mingling with my eyelashes, which crumpled under the droplet’s

touch, another piece of me lost to nature.

I didn’t even notice the rain had stopped hitting me until I noticed you standing there,

umbrella outstretched in an awkward kindness.

My heart gave a lurch of hope and then despair. I’d made it twenty years without another

soul, and I believed I could make it twenty more. But then-

You smiled, and the clouds parted in a magnificent rainbow that I imagined could reflect

across my skin, that I could melt from your gaze alone.

To be made of soap is to have the world imprint itself on your surface, shining in the

reflection of your cheeks, but never have it extend that same courtesy back to you.

I asked for your number.

We communicated through the phone for weeks, and as you spoke about your artist

dreams and hopes and goals, I would listen, always looking at your black umbrella in the corner

of my room, the umbrella you told me to keep.

I took it from you so lightly that first day, so my flesh wouldn’t bend around its handle,

despite the violent urge to feel my hands decimate into soapy pulp around the plastic. I tried to

smile, but I’d never done it before, and I swore I saw some fear in your eyes when you realized

what I was, never mind the fact that you kept calling me anyway.

I knew I should have kept my distance, I knew that interacting with you was dangerous,

but I decided to meet you at a coffee shop. I wanted to get to know you, how you love cream and

extra sugar in your coffee, how you enjoy the colorful things in life—that’s why you paint.

When your hand held mine, you didn’t flinch at the unnaturally smooth texture, and when

I left the shop I looked down to find flecks of yellow, blue, and purple paint speckled across my

palm.

To be made of soap is to forget how to feel out of necessity, only to remember how to feel

on accident, and die in the sea of emotion.

To be made of soap is to know you have no heartbeat, but a heart is not the only symbol

of love.

I shouldn’t have continued to see you, but I couldn’t help myself, couldn’t help it when

you took me to your apartment, and I let your kiss me despite the fact I knew I would fade, let

your hands touch me and turn my milky skin into a rainbow, your smile made the world brighter,

even as my adoration left me smaller in stature, my breasts and hips had flattened out against

your touch, your fingerprints clung to me, and I should have been afraid of what would come,

but I couldn’t be.

When I came home after that night, my parents nearly had a stroke, my mother tried in

vain to carve new lips onto my face, my father adding delicate streaks of hair atop my scalp. I

appreciated their efforts, but I knew I was already so close to gone. Faded into barely anything in

a matter of days.

I heard my mom’s sobs through the wall, my father murmuring to her in hushed tones.

Maybe I was selfish for leaving them like this, for my own personal happiness.

Being made of soap means loving deeply enough that the emotion will destroy you in a

violent final tempest, and being proud of yourself once it does.

The last time I saw you, my body was akin to an unfinished sculpture, indented and only

half-carved, loving hands having smoothed down the rest of me into something you could shape.

I was your muse.

You were my artist.

The last time I saw you, I gave you your umbrella back, your fingers lingering as they

brushed against mine. Your dark eyes burned as you kissed me, and as the rain began to fall

without the shelter of your umbrella, and my body dissolved. Rain tunneled through my head,

down onto my toes, washing away the features my parents had etched on to me, my body

shrinking and warping until I melted into a lump covered in foam, and you cradled me as I

washed away. Even in my final throes your painted arms still managed to color me in red.

If I had a mouth at that moment, I would have smiled.

To be made of soap is to learn to be happy in the instants before you fade away.

Maya Bourak ‘27

This piece was inspired by one of my intrusive thoughts - "what would it be like to be made of soap?" From there I thought of a lot more questions I wanted answered and I think that this piece turned out interesting. It's very introspective, and it's nowhere near a final draft but I enjoy how it's going at the moment.