If I cease to think, I think, I can feel my way to nothing, no body.
Out of this aspirated knot, out of my skin, shed my body.
Imagine instead I’m candlelit from within. This is what’s left of
girlhood. OK.
Wondrous dirty cities, moonless frozen nights, from inside my body.
The thirty-one segments of your spinal column are rungs on a ladder
I can climb.
Because I can hear the aortic chambers of a heart like mine, I love
your body.
I’m searching for the mouth of a river that connects one mind
to another;
I try to speak, speak from my insides, not my body.
I am as frightened in this body as I am when I take a step or two out
of it.
A hard slap from God tells me, get back in your body.
I find myself again and again in a myriad of mundane circumstances:
washing a pot
choosing a shirt, riding the underground trains; a living body.
Your impassive face not loving me, is the least of my concerns, but
in terms of proximity, sleeping next to a grenade feels safer than
your body.
I decide I’ll be barren. Inert, blameless, incapable of resurrection.
I’ll be the door that doesn’t lead to another door, a dead-end body.
Command the winter wait, snow stop. Isn’t that love? Each
accelerating season stands still for a moment between our bodies.
I miss my mom. This is not the first time I’ve lost her but it will be
the last.
So thoughtless, Mary; will you forget her face? I look at my legs and
see her body.
So amazing and talented. The work. My friend. ❤️
This floored me. No words- I felt each line, slice through all the “ me me me’s” and I was that body and the body that loved and hated that body and grief- and other stuff too. You. Are. Brilliant and I thank you,
This floored me. No words- I felt each line, slice through all the “ me me me’s” and I was that body and the body that loved and hated that body . The slam in the face ending about loss spun me like you do . Not translatable descriptive s for the loss of a mom in this moment.