The leg articulated at the knee. It had a strap that I could leave outside my trousers or fish up underneath them to pull on if I needed to bend the thing. It worked tolerably well but chafed the tender thickened skin at the amputation site. A piece of my soul had certainly been dismembered with the leg. I fixated on my body, replete with fury. I imagined my leg always lying beneath me – a dead thing – with the remorse a person ought to feel upon losing a close relative. I was so full of myself in those days. I curled my toes that were not there and marvelled at that magic – the realness of all things that were not real. Perhaps none of this was real at all. Perhaps my life was a prosthetic. Artifice. A made-up thing.
This was a thought I wanted to get away from. I ran my hand down the f
