#selectivethinking

[thebikedyke]

@selectivethinking and I

[selectivethinking]

Yours & Mine

I like the way my body feels   next to yours. I like the way the space between grows smaller   & smaller when I place my hand in yours. I like the way you wrap your arms around my belly, the way I don’t flinch I soften when you touch me. I like the way I lose track   of what is yours and what is mine.

[selectivethinking]

Open

We grow into ourselves like potted plants like an orchard of apple trees, learning to stretch our bodies towards the light.

No one tells you it hurts to grow, that one branch might break into another before you have finished mourning the last.

I am learning to be naked, which is another way to say open.

I peel myself like a tangerine and offer you my flesh; You dip your hand into the soil and everything collapses.

[selectivethinking]

Sinkhole

A man the other day told me he would never live in Florida because of the hurricanes and the sinkholes;   “They could swallow an entire house,” he said, “these sinkholes.”   I considered it—a house or a body swallowed by the earth. I think of my own body, my own heart, and how it feels as though it’s swallowing itself. I wish you could see the way my heart is stretching for you, the way it doesn’t stop.

[selectivethinking]

Instead

I could have kissed you then, I could have bitten into you like a peach, soft curve of your face asking   to be held.  

But I put my hands in my pockets and looked for my cigarettes; I bit into the red lining of my cheek.

[selectivethinking]

Blueish

It’s a question      of blue,

or the shades of color that lie behind the retina.

The images you open and close      without pause, the water of memory, or the memory of water,   the pulse of the sky above the sea, blueish      in the white and gray of colors      that do not stand on their own but fall,      inside of one another.

You are shades mixed into shades      of light and fog and something soft      enough to wrap yourself around;

The melancholy you hold      is close enough to breathe.

[selectivethinking]

Peony

You bring me white peonies & neither of us can remember the name.

You tell me they’re the ones that open, the ones that spread their bodies               extending their petals like arms,

the beauty of something moving past itself.

When you look at me, I think of all the ways I want to open for you.

[selectivethinking]

Caterpillarness

You were not always this way,            uncertain and tired;

Most people don’t know to become a butterfly the caterpillar digests itself, releasing enzymes to dissolve the caterpillar tissues.

The skin of your mind is open, disintegrating into imaginal discs             the endoskeleton of trees             or of mountains what your mind will wrap itself around

to become.