touch(love)
i. collarbone if i starve, will you love me better? i’m so hungry all of the time. no peanut butter, no milk, no pasta i tiptoe on the scale like a ballerina and trace my collarbone in the mirror i’m an archaeologist digging for love, but i only find bone.
ii. lips i’m so lonely. i get tired of performing. i just want to escape for a while. alcohol loosens my limbs and limbers my lips gives me permission to scavenge for scraps of touch(love) beneath the naked moon to eat greedily from the hands that feed me. i’m so hungry all of the time.
iii. vagina pt 1 no, i’m not going to “come for you.” you’ve been touching me for literally three minutes and i don’t think you know how to do this.
iv. mouth in the story i tell, i say he locked the car doors but that’s not true - i just couldn’t say the words. he didn’t lock me in, didn’t hold me down, but he might as well have because i couldn’t find my voice enough to say - no. i don’t want to. take me home. maybe if i’d learned that men give a damn what comes out of my mouth i’d have been more inclined to speak
v. kneecaps i learn how to fake a good sneeze to explain my watery eyes but sometimes the patterned grout on the bathroom floor leaves a maroon grid on my kneecaps and i haven’t figured out how to explain that yet
vi. cheek when you kiss me for the first time and put your hand on my cheek your palm feels like the pillow i can finally lay my head on after years of insomnia vii. chest my mind can’t comprehend what my body knows: i’m having a panic attack because you’re fucking me the way a stranger would. the touch is there, the (love) is not. my body remembers. you pack your white t-shirt into your duffel bag and the black pain that splits my chest open isn’t the pain of you leaving - it’s the pain of me, being alone with myself. viii. muscle when i finally unhook my inner self from her marionette strings she is furious with me. she is furious for all the times i taped her mouth, dazed her with whiskey, and snuck out the back door, searching for touch(love). her voice is hoarse from all the times she called out in vain - that’s not love. she is skeletal her muscles have atrophied but she cleans house righteously. i watch in obedient silence as she throws away the bottles. the scale. she says, we have some mending to do.
ix. skin the cashier at the Goodwill on Broadway knows me as the crying girl who buys sweaters on Fridays. i prepare for winter the way a grizzly would i fall asleep dwarfed in sweaters. it’s not quite the same as your body holding mine but it’s just as warm and now i can sprawl across the bed like a starfish x. stomach to celebrate the New Year we wear wool socks and stand around the kitchen table knives in hand, we chop beets, cilantro, cabbage - bright foods that beg to be celebrated. my stomach howls at the full moon. can i love food when i was taught to hate this body? can i rebuild? xi. vagina pt 2 i splatter my sexuality across the canvas of this whitewashed town like a fistful of green fingerpaint. i come to enjoy her, this self who tilts her chin and volunteers the delicate skin of her neck to her lovers in the dark. this self who says, i’m hungry. i want. like this. i am wickedly unrestrained and slowly i learn that surrender is actionable and opportunities for pleasure are boundless. xii. body i have been courting my body. it’s early still, but i think she’s starting to like me. i’m so hungry all of the time, she whispers. i know, i reply, and she nearly jumps out of her skin. (she didn’t think i could hear.) i smile devilishly, lead her to the grocery store, hand her my credit card. buy anything you want. i want nothing more than to spoil this woman. i cook her colorful feasts to the tune of jazz. i take her dancing. sometimes i catch her peering at the marionette strings hanging dusty in the closet. sometimes, she cries and i can’t assuage her fears. i don’t blame her. it’s hard to convince someone you’ve abandoned that you won’t leave her again. so i’m taking things slow. it’s early still, but i think she’s starting to like me.
This poem may have ripped my heart out and had me crying at my desk this morning.
