Sometimes I think clouds are sewing
their distracted blue pollen into my abdomen.
Sometimes I think of the intricacy
of what resides in me—all the canals
and nicked windowsills, all the dull-lustered,
smooth-muscled
engine rooms. And the captions running
along the bottom of each scene, as if
they could begin to explain what a body is.
There’s no preposition ample enough
to explain this quotidian, sun-breaking-out-
all-along-my-skin relationship. This rain-humming-
against-my-neck-and-ankles-as-I-cross-
the-street. This waking up to see if your
breathing body lies silhouetted next to me.
The head is an unapologetic casket,
accepting its hand-picked chrysanthemums
and flesh wounds of regret, its dented sign-posts
and ragged roadkill. The head’s a running
faucet stabbing off into all kinds
of dubious directions. My neighbor leaves
her garage apartment for the umpteenth time.
She wears a lavender sweatshirt, and she/her body
make their way down the driveway, through
another day of light-rinsed birds, dentist offices,
and the multi-colored, flinching muscle
of traffic patterns. How many times have I not
considered the fact of my body as I glossed over
insect-thin script, as I swallowed a beer’s
sluggish grin? Last night, my body and I
slept through another dream of half-finished
plots and women younger than me lifting themselves
demurely out of swimming pools. I tried not
to picture my life as a repeating carousel, spinning
its one allotment of swaying ponies. And sometimes
I think my body is willing to swallow any kind of singing,
even the bullet-sized bees,
or the steadfastness of the afternoon trees.