a body is a body

i.

yesterday you were sleeping on the red rug behind the couch just before dinner. gillian was calling us upstairs, so i guess i took it upon myself to wake you up-- you were curled into yourself with your head on a pink beanbag, and i couldn’t find it in myself to break the silence. the curvature of your waist was rising and lengthening, disguising white ribs and a spaghetti sauce heart and two lungs like great balloons. you were wearing this blue plaid flannel that struck against the clean 6 oclock glow of your flying buttress cheekbones; your overarching eyebrows, like gothic domes, hug the fullness of your skin. I hold you in the palm of my hand, a porcelain figure that would shatter into dust if i let you slip between my fingers.

ii.

your hands were nestled into each other like baby birds, and your knees were bent as if you knew even in sleep, to protect your vital organs. anyway, i think you had forgotten that your own heart was beating but i could see it thrumming just then-- like a canned tomato that God breathed stop-motion animation into. at that moment, there was this great clear wall between you and me and the harshness of waking. i didn’t want to be the one to remind you that your heart was still beating, and frankly i didn’t think i could. you were benjamin button cradled in the womb, nestled in a cavity of fluid, an amniotic sac of alone.

the warmth from your skin was so visible-- and for a second, it was clear to me that a body is a body is just a thing filled with other things.

metaphor exercise…what am i?

i seep from the hood of the mangled steel skeleton, leaving my body behind.

i have become amorphous, leaking from the orifices of a dying engine.

oil has pooled on the pavement in an impenetrable black hole.

the metal frame turns cherry red, magma from a caldera, deep and sizzling.

then, shooting through the tailpipe at lightspeed, i burst into the air in an opaque, noxious cloud.

i envelop the bodies that pass through me, coating them in a thick metallic must.

glowing cinders ignite within the wreckage, foreshadowing plumes of fire.

it doesn’t matter; i’ve sprung loose from my prison.

hot and reeking, my molecules expand to fill their new home.

i sublimate from a liquid to a gas and i slip away into the sharp, chilled air.

rapa nui

a sun-scarred monument, barren-skinned.

skittish wings congregate in masses at his feet

the palms reach out; a greeting–

he rises from the soil, inch by inch, scraping...

clouds bend to his will,

white puffs exhaled into existence

the sky, smooth as fresh milk

washes the cracking earth.

his body like a moonscape

(stoic, stark, stolid)

is roughhewn and unshaken

draped in shadows that change with

the contours of the sun

eastwestnorthsouth he exhales rushwind and his body shifts ever so slightly, crunching