I do not know how many songs there are
about bodies laid upon bed sheets, but it is fair
to assume that the thing that occupies so much
of our time, must be thoroughly documented.
The nights where I have the energy
to realize that I am a thing, a sordid collection of
conflicted and purposed parts
forged in times separated from each other by years
and events that shear consciousness
like white hot wire through styrofoam come rarely
and this is one of them:
To touch and feel the skin
gripping lean thighs and eyes widening when I
realize that it is, all of it, muscle and mine.
That these curves, hard up to the same layer
of brown and tan scar and hair too fine to see
at hip shoving this way and that against veins and
jutting hip bone is mine. Knee torn and reborn and
scar tissue thicker than, who knows what, from
falls doing things hard and angry and impassioned and
unforgivably reckless. The fall and rise of solar plexus
against a heart, one size too big, and beating hard enough
to get the only complements I can remember
from nursing staff, laughing at my levity and
quietly doubting my sanity in looping notes. These
are all mine. These fans of fingers and ribs leaved
with webbed musculature and a liver side that swells
against walls of sadness and roads of veins and a
stomach like a wishing well
with no water
and a heap of metal gathering rust.
All mine. And feeling and prodding and watching
toes wiggle in ways I used to despise, but have
learned to love because they are
the stars of every show I manage to go to, and all mine.
More than anything, I guess, in this time of half and un
dress, it is a joy to be the acquainter, the match maker
between me
and the rest of myself.
