Like babes sedated on carousels with mousetraps in our hair, we watched the tide
ascend the bathroom wall, and fell over laughing. Fold of rug-burned thumbs
behind the knees, we slid to the bumpy bottom - to where paper cranes sink
like tapioca pearls, and our enamels ache like the arctic.
jade
Skin will drop off my bones
Like hot chicken off wing-
bones if
I move to quickly or fail
to tense my muscles against it but
the muscles are falling too – their tendons
Are like the tendons of mummies. I could be
made of ash, but it all feels more of a slip,
than a crumble.
Sand stilting the pendulum motion of my knees, the cockle
of my ankle. See the scalloped edges of my tongue
where I’ve bitten it. The cold the cold the
cold in my platelets shivers vibrations
through my capillaries so they wiggle like hydra, but
my head is a furnace, threatening
to melt the metal vice clamped there.
When I read the pamphlets the faces suggested clarity.
The blues and greens and elegant type suggested
Rebirth. But, I am re-experiencing the days of dazes and
Dozing off in parks, and
Not being able to crawl out of bed for chapstick
When my bottom lip stuck to the top one and they tore
When I jammed a cigarette between them, and
that time I fell asleep in the bath and woke
With bruises where the ceramic had stopped me falling through the floor.
-Rae Victoria Stevenson
