Issue 11.1 Fall 2015

11.1 cover image

 

 

I know this body not

 

Maddie Blackwell

 

 

I know this body not, a labyrinth in freckled white and sickening pink.
I struggle against her, this person I both am and never was,
Leaving clues in the serpentine spirals of thought and memory.
We echo the harsh lines of trees and sun and shadows,
Sharp and anchored in darkness.
I swear that I am the grass under your feet,
the trees held up like wrinkled palms around us,
I am between us now, indistinct and relieved at my formlessness, and yet have form,
Everything I am is a contradiction.
Everything that I do brings me back to this place of infancy and thievery.
But what is access without agitation?
What else is entrance but intrusion?
I could run from this but know no other way to survive,
No way to breathe without these branches above me,
No way to breathe without these hands around my neck.
Whose hands are these? I know this body not,
But taste dirt and metallic noise when I look at her,
Inhale the soft expansion of my fear and the effort that clings,
Foul and rounded, to the base of my mind.
There is the thickness of fresh air in my lungs,
Filling my skull,
And the light pools around me,
Spilling from us both like worms from the earth.
There is no darkness, no shadow,
Only illumination and the ceremonial shedding of flesh.
I know this body not, but taste bile and wary reverence when I look upon it,
Warm my hands in the soft glow of its unsettling skin.
I know this body not, but carefully, reluctantly, I kneel to greet it as it rises from below.

 

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