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When I make wuzu and wash my face with the water, I sometimes imagine it to be a kind of solvent, eating away my skin, the muscle beneath it, and the bone beneath that, the water stripping not just the dream from my head but my head itself, until by the end I'm just scrubbing whatever vanity isn't, whatever to be is, whatever's beneath my body and all its equipment for keeping me here, that's what I imagine myself washing. I get the sense my is is filthier than other people's. Heavier with all that dirt.
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