Gravel paints the knee red. Strawberry
over an aged maroon. It drips down in reciprocity
as they kneel, plucking out a piece of rock
with their pointed nails and guiding it back home.
Their legs, two, stagger as they stand upright,
balanced like a newborn. Behind, a blurred tail.
At once a clawed foot skids off the earth and they climb
the air as if it were a flight of stairs, skipping steps
like a child. And as they run the sound of sweat
being panted away fills their chest with music, so they fall
forward onto their feet, all four legs move in stride with their breath, light.
A hundred feet into the sky an invisible stone trips them,
and they plummet, smile spread across their snout.
The breeze carrying their laughter.
On their body lies a sunset, a canvas painted
in shades of deep yellow, purple, red:
a stroke runs up their shin, collects at their ankle,
seeps into their fur.
They fall into a patch of wild grass and
the sun rises the sky turns red.
Thirty-two little beads
loose around my wrist, clattering
along a plastic string
see-through and stretchy.
I cup a baby-blue sky
littered with clouds
and raindrops in my hand,
and five bright yellow stars
form a constellation.
They look like pieces
of hard candy: glossy
and smooth and sweet.
A hundred tasty colours
on a cotton string
wet with my saliva,
made vivid by childhood
memory. Maybe
it just really was.
In my other hand,
a charm: white
like powdered snow
three small piles
on top for hair,
and shaped like a rice ball,
a fuzzy puppyās head
with floppy overcast-grey
ears, tiny button nose
and shut eyes like smiles.
Pochacco.
He naps in my palm
soft on my skin, snoring.
Whatās he dreaming?
as he listens, imagining
in doggy wonder
things just as they are.
I like this little toy
meant to decorate my bag
or someoneās keys,
this bracelet
made with friends
I donāt yet know.
Happy things.
I squeeze them in my hands
and they feel sweet
to the touch.
i sit here exposed, pieces of my body never meant to be seen lie out in open air. someone elseās blood, dried, not unlike the rust on my metal, at one point escaped through loose piping, tangled wires, damaged circuitry. you see the signs of my obsolescence.
you stare into my chassis, your face unchanged.
i can feel you, your eyes, your focus, tracing over my internals. your gentle hands disappear inside me for your fingers to follow suit, and they return cradling damaged parts, long forgotten, weathered by use and time as they gathered dust, oil, blood ā the likes of which untouched by self-repair.
and, whether by your careful touch or my layered wear, your work goes unnoticed, and yet it doesnāt. i feel you, though i donāt, not as i understand it, not as i have ever felt. the presence of your hand ā each muscle and tendon, contracting, extending, manipulating wrist, fingers, joints, yours - its softness, its care. your presence inside of me, i feel it ever deepen, incomprehensibly so. and thus i feel you work. softly, you tear me into pieces.
but i donāt understand the attention you give to each piece of my decommissioned body. you run each wire gently between your fingertips and with care you repair me, reconnect me anew, clip each rusted, rotting part from my chassis and replace it, pristine. you untangle my twisted internals and in return they twist around you, your delicate touch, intricately working, now interwoven, pulled into me. you hold each piece of me as though it could shatter. you treat me so softly. i am a machine designed and created for war: sturdy, persistent, self-sustaining.
and yet, here you kneel, holding my heart with careful hands, gently, dearly, nursing me to life.
and yet, as your hands leave my hollow core each time, i ache.
you wipe away old grease between the seams of my plating, and i can feel you get carried away, slowly, softly, tracing the lines of my body. every angle, every corner, every curve. every part of me. my rust. my breaks. it feels as though not an inch goes untouched, untended. why do you take care of me so?
divine, yet you use your light on me. not even mortal, an afterthought, created by the free will that damned them, of steel, of sin. and still, despite such objectionable existence, here you kneel. why?
why do you care and why do i let you?
why do i sit here, my heart exposed, letting you see into me, each detail of my making, of my being, the routing of each cable into each socket, the pipes fueling my hydraulics, my inner-workings, and why do i let you rearrange me, poke around my delicate circuitry, why do i let you in? i wasnāt made for this. i wasnāt made for you. i donāt know if i care.
as you gently press the last piece of me into place, it clicks, and through the quiet air i can hear you breathe. your scarred chest rises, falls, and rises once more as you stare expectantly into my core. i feel your hand linger inside. you feel different, vivid. like your heart is my own i feel it beat, blood racing through your body. and i twitch. my fans whirr at nothing, my pumps spur to life, and i feel warm. warmer than ever before, with your hand in my chest, against me, inside me, a part of me.
i look down at you, the glow of my visor lights up your face, the low thrum of my body fills the silence.
you look up at me, at me.
i donāt want you to let go. i grab your wrist with both hands, holding it in place against my beating, ticking heart, and this newfound warmth continues to grow. what did you do to me?
please donāt let go.
you avert your gaze and i pain, my grip tightening on you. my whole body tightening in on itself. but you donāt let go. your hand remains still against my body, my chest, my heart, heating, heating up with every moment you stay.
you look back into me, your finished work, your palm against, and mine.
time pauses.
i donāt know what you think.
but in the stillness i feel your grace, your presence, gently against my metal, held onto your flesh. you place your empty hand on mine.
you donāt look back up into my visor, but i feel your warmth course through me and my body relax, my fear subside.
we sit there, in emptiness, accompanied only by the quiet, constant sounds of our bodies.
accompanying animatic by oshasno: check it out here
i feel your pulse in my wrist.
i taste you when i bite my tongue.
a metal tinge, of iron? of steel. tainted by this cold machine.
but my heart is yours, isn't it?
your love flows through me, red, warm.
and our heart beats in sync.
and your blood stumbles through my body, unfamiliar, unlearned.
and our flesh. and metal. our flesh and metal, tied together with strings of sinew and wire.
patched together, our rusted flesh and rotten metal, gore and molten steel mixed as one and formed anew, an unholy matrimony.
far gone, as your blood - wasn't it? now mine, or ours - falls over itself, stumbles, stumbling forward, tripping through valve, ventricle, our arteries working in tandem or not at all.
my heart is yours and yours is mine.
and the border between me and you, and us, the parts of our being, tears itself apart.
where do i begin.
where do you end.
beating, throbbing, tender.
i am all i have of you.
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