[**Nonfiction. Nothing here is imagined. This is real, observed, remembered — even if the world chose not to see it anymore.]
The men in the article didn’t just sit and wait to die. They fought, in the only ways they could. Some of them tied off an arm. Others went further — legs, even. Not because of injury. Not to stop bleeding. But to preserve blood flow to the gut. In severe volume depletion, the body starts shutting off the periphery — the limbs go cold, the skin dries, the vessels constrict. It’s a built-in triage system: protect the brain, the heart, maybe the kidneys.
And I think about that.
How far they had to fall to reach that kind of clarity. To look at their own arm, or leg, and say: you don’t matter anymore. Not because they’d given up — but because they hadn’t. Because they were still trying to survive, even if the cost was part of themselves.
It hits me hard. Not just as history, but as possibility.
Because I’m walking a version of that same path. Quietly. Strategically.
Keeping salt in. Saving movement. Holding heat.
I haven’t tied off a limb — not physically.
But I’ve let go of other things, parts of life, body, and identity, in order to preserve what’s left of the core.
Those are photos we missed. But I can still see them clearly. You can imagine how they might be something my index did not want on top of the pile.
But the gut? That’s where survival happens. That’s where salt is absorbed. Where calories are extracted. If the blood stops there, you don’t just collapse — you unravel. So they did what the body couldn’t do fast enough. They tied off what didn’t matter to buy time for what did. Primitive tourniquets, self-applied, not to stop blood from leaking, but to stop it from wandering. A final act of desperation, or clarity — depending on how far down the ladder you’ve already gone.**
