The Left Breast, Demitria Sabanty

THE LEFT BREAST

Demitria Sabanty

I paint a portrait of my naked body, catching the reds, yellows, the surprise of purples, the saturated blues—all the unforeseen hues of my skin.

In my reference photo I’m standing in a shower looking regal. My body is turned about 30 degrees to my right, draping my left side in shadow, but my face is pointed straight toward the camera, chin up, loud—no smile, no frown. My knee is jutting out with nerve. My hands are delicately curled into fists. My right breast is obscured, but my left is arresting, bulging, a glowing lighthouse, the heart of the photo.

I don’t look angry. I look undeniable.

My brush is bathed in pigment, tacky acrylic calcifying in the brush hairs: stiff, stiff, stiff. I ponder, How to capture the attitude of the neck? The grit of the lips? The density of the ass? The caress of the hair? The hate of the retina?

I begin with the left breast, the apex of the photograph. The guts of me, the red core, found not in the stomach—the sad sack hanging out—but in my left breast. It holds, in its majesty, my very essence. This breast, imperfect, pointing out like a cone, has never drawn my attention before. It’s merely been a swelling, sore reminder that I’m about to bleed.

I study the form of my breast, a fatty pomegranate with a bull’s-eye in its center. In the photo, the breast is ignited, divine. I stare at it for so long, with such reverence, that I almost forget it has ever been touched. But it has been touched. I fail to escape the hands, eyes, mouths, both wanted and unwanted, both foreign and beloved, which have reached for my breast. In a crowd pulsing toward the stage with the force of a great sweaty magnet. In a cold and sterile apartment, so undecorated and blank, like the man who occupies it. In a kitchen crowded like an ant farm. The intruders are endless, daring to linger everywhere, on my mighty left breast, a flag to which they pledge their

blind, hungry patriotism. My flesh neglected and consumed. Both bare and clothed, I’ve felt the map of my body searched and examined. I am nude to the world.

My fingers grip my palette knife furiously, stirring the paints into the tints of my skin. My neck aches as it always does, the thudding pain of defeat: each brushstroke an unforgivable mistake. The rendition’s nothing like the real thing. I suppose it is a gift to be so dissatisfied with a rendition of my body. I’m not frustrated at the inaccuracy of the image; I’m angry that the photo is so much more striking, so elegant. I am unable to capture my body’s own beauty.

I examine the photo, my form, its contours and edges, each inch demanding acknowledgment. I keep getting hung up on my chest, the damn left breast, so pointed and decided. It occurs to me that it looks brave. So proud to announce itself in that way, to demand the honor it has been denied.

I lean back and sigh, almost satisfied. The painting is not as striking as the photograph, but the strokes of the chest are looking heroic. My left breast, still soft and dense, tethered to me, a rusted anchor.