My body is the world in little

Boundaries, always boundaries.

I keep telling the story again and though I find different exits, the walls never fall. My life is paced out - here and here and here - I can alter its shape but I can't get beyond it. I tunnel through, seem to find a way out, but the exits lead nowhere. I'm back inside, leaning on the limits of the self.

This is the body, the sealed unit that cautiously takes in what it needs to survive, that stoutly repels invaders of the microbe kind. This is the body, whose boundaries weaken only in decay and then the freedom it brings is useless. United with the world at last, I am dead to it.

This is the body, and my body is the world in little. I am the Kosmos - the all that there is, and at the same time I was never more outside, never more than nothing. Nothing bounded by nothing.

Nothing has an unlikely property. It is heavy.

Jeanette Winterson, Weight