Curl fingers around scapula. Hard.
Twist wrist to gash bone against
tendon. Squeeze so that the bone marrow
pressures between insides of every osteoblast.
Feel it mechanistically before prying open like
grasping still steaming shell to search
for tenderest roe, fifteen minutes,
no more no less according to my mother.
Claws waving away at nothing but wisps of air.
Which is to say, I wonder if that’s how my father
saw through her. Lacing ivy through her veins,
remembering to purchase flowers in the aftermath.
Drifting petals repaid with the juiciest meats
too much invested in to collapse inwards,
intricate, perfect figure. Folded cranes
on my fifth birthday and since,
absentmindedly never failed to mention:
no matter wings, there is no flight.
Trace your fingertips along sternum. Distance to
merge within chondrocytes. Envision yourself as
functionally systematic, dependent without blood
or nerves. Now, compress your thumb. Press
elasticity. There is no repair anymore likening
the scar on my mother’s face from that mirror.
Ironic. She has never looked back.
I do it for her. I still fold cranes on my birthdays,
like engagement rings in pawnshops.
Some days, I wonder what it would be like
to be an echo chamber full of absence.
Would the vibrations collapse upon themselves?
The sure line of my shoulder frightens me
sometimes. Sometimes I’m upset by how much
I want to upset every functional part of myself.
Other times, I don’t know where to start.
Could you find the juiciest parts of myself,
and if you did what would you do with it?
