My fingers glide down my torso
and, upon reaching a triangular forest,
transform into delicate tentacles 
with slippery precision.

And when the moon peeks through the clouds
to beadily ogle
my post-Eden postmodern nakedness,
I am not ashamed.
I even throw my blankets off:
“Look at me!”
But she pauses my momentum
when she aims her shine
upon those sighing plants
across the room. 

 

My mother used to scurry in 
to water them sometimes, scolding me. 
But how could I have cared for another living thing
before myself?

 

So now I think about watering my plants 
but let my own flower water instead,
my body slowly un-tensing
into a pool of warmth.
Soon I’m left cold, 
and I scrunch my blankets 
back up to my chin. 

 

The darkness comes heavy on my chest:
it knows I lie vulnerable
after release. 
I water my tissues for hours.

 

My plants shift in the stillness 
of the corner: 
rest your mind, they whisper, 
rest your mind. 

My mouth tastes grey as rotating bay waves 

and my irises shiver 

as cumulonimbi pile in my sockets—

 

“Captain!” 

 

I’m gripping a duvet of whitecaps

and thinking about the Plank of Wood 

and its edge—

 

“Captain?”

 

Her voice screeches with the wind.

 

I’m trying to spit this salt out 

of my cerebrum slits 

when I finally spew,

“Shut up, wench!”

 

Locks of my hair eddy in the air

with a thick glare,

Medusa’s snakes.

 

She doesn’t cower right away;

she wants to steer.

“Not now.” 

 

But I don’t want to steer

so I stay in my cot

and let the wind guide the wheel.

 

She’s muffled now as I sink

under my comforter, 

water licking at my ears. 

I let the ship rock me 

and the waves numb me… 

 

I’m out of control;

she won’t let me steer!

I resort to dissecting the dark bay,

but I mean, really, 

how many waves can I dismember 

and try to reconstruct 

before I end up drowning 

in their instinctive will to consume?

 

I analyze how they form,

why they swell,

but what good if she won’t listen to me

and make a move?

 

“Captain, please!”

I know she can hear me

but we’re split by the wind,

and she’s the stronger of us.

She’s Captain, 

though she never respects the title.

 

Scurvy lurks

and we haven’t eaten all day 

so I’m pushing through the fog to her

“Hey! I’m kinda hungry! 

Aren’t you hungry, Captain?”

 

I’m grumbling, a wave

of hunger’s

cold spray hits my face 

and then the salty water seeps into me,

wiggling into the negative space 

—emptied of nutrients—

all my energy given to

giving up.

 

I’m too stubborn to eat—

 

What if it helps?

 

and then what?

I don’t trust my fingers on the wheel

so I’ll just curl like a fetus,

my ship a cradle in the bough

of the bay

rocked by the wind. 

 

I rest into the fall

and practice being

nothing

to prepare

for what loiters

beyond the dangling Plank—

 

Fucking hell! 

I hear her voice again.

Why is she still trying?

 

“Just some food. 

Then we’ll figure out the rest.”

 

“Yeah? 

You think eating some plants

will get us out of this storm?”

 

This damned crew

is on the verge of mutiny! 

I feel it in her condescension.

How could a weak bitch

like her lead

if I can’t?

 

Does she think I won’t

just grab an oar and start pulling

at the fabric of water

until it creases enough 

to let us slip through?

 

Well, she’s right. 

I’m too weak.

 

“I can’t do this alone.”

I fold myself into the wrinkly bay

and search for that edge 

she’s always talking about.

 

But the shore comes first, 

and I tumble into pillows of rocks

that scratch me into slumber… 

 

…Fuck it! I jump ship.

I’m blown underwater

and flail after her in the restless waves…

 

…I awake from a tempestuous

slap, my listless bones

in Captain's arms…

 

It’s that howling impatient thing that suddenly appears in a clap of thunder like some god and hits you in the face, that rises up out of the very depths of the abyss and smites you with its fury!¹

  

The sea erodes our bodies into one

and lets us float along her translucent skin

We have questions—

I 

have questions

“Are you one

or many?”

A riptide pulls me under

and grants me salty vision:

 

a bloom of jellyfish slowly bounces by,

a whale’s shadow hovers in the distance,

crabs crawl across the bottom sand,

a school of fish,

a coral reef,

the sea 

mother of domesticity  

carries me home,

and births me onto my shore.

 

Now how do I learn to shelter 

all of my selves

the way she does?

I like to feel her strip my skull

and pick a part to probe.

She spits chagrin into my Grooves 

and never mops my lobes.

 

She seeps into my ventricles 

and drowns my buoyant mind. 

A tendril penetrates my throat 

and coils around my spine.

 

She tongues my thoughts until I come 

to trust what she observes;

glues muntins to my dusty eyes

and cons my optic nerves.

 

I’m dripping with her Frame of Mind: 

my fragile one, it quakes.

A contradiction. I spurns I.

My mind’s Foundation breaks.

1.

Bed head and crusty eyes, dreading the day ahead, what’s left of it anyway, late afternoon sun dancing in tree shadows across my pillow-printed face, picking cat hairs out of my toothbrush, when our eyes meet, asking her if this is forever   

 

2.
6 a.m., spilling my strange thoughts, lying on a soft queen bed, in a flowing white toga of comforter, hope meets my eyes in the mirror, golden dust of rising sun glimmers on her face

 

3.
About to leave the house, pause at the front hall mirror, frown at her baggy jeans, her awkward figure, she rolls her eyes: didn’t you feel good inside this just yesterday? No, I wish I could melt into water and shape the land around me, instead I’m cookie cuttered into a clunk of muscle and bone draped with skin

 

4.
My breasts look perfect, the way I’d like them to look if I were to be made into a statue, my torso too, I’m wearing just my pajama bottoms and for some reason it makes me feel sexy; sometimes when I’m fully naked I feel so vulnerable, so natural, so squishy, that I’m afraid to feel sexy – now, she catches my eye and winks, divine

 

5.
Ashamed, shy, how can I be afraid to look myself in the eyes? The bathroom floor is gross, but I don’t have the energy to clean, it’s not home, it’s just a dorm, white unnatural light wakes me from a stupor but feels angry, I miss windows, as I wash my hands clean of all my bad habits, I finally glance up at her, and she’s determined

 

6.
Her red eyes blaze over, words shaping and cartwheeling out of the pupils, the whites tattooed with them, newspaper print; bounding across lyrics, guided by the force of music, we flow into the brain, fucking incredible – meticulous, clever, unafraid, weird – our energy there waters the delicate honeysuckle wilting in the walls, I tell her I love her and my mouth tastes of nectar

 

7.
It’s just me, hasn’t it always been just me? I look into my reflected eyes to double-check, ask the mirror: If I’m alone, who will keep me in check?

 

8.
I watch myself dance the way I never could in front of others, body fluid like wings beating in time with the wind, eyes pulling me in; I see how I could be seen if I wasn’t so worried about being seen.

The walls are lined with mirrors 
and there stands a sculpture in the center of the room.

It is __________

      adj

and made of _____________;
                    pl. noun

it doesn’t need a mirror to reflect your 
  ______________.
 emotion

 

Your eyeballs roll side to side
to others’ faces, digesting their behavior 
to inform your own.

You envy those who hold eye contact 
with themselves in the different mirrors,

who place their hands against reflected ones
and embrace each genre of themselves.

 

There are others who shrink in the 
infinity of self-reflection.
You stand with them, 
staring at the sculpture 
mindlessly.

 

Because if you truly scrutinize it
you see how its ______________
                          same pl. noun
are actually your _________________
                            pl. personal artifact 
                            (physical object

                               or abstract idea)

and it is shaped like your brain
and you know it’s yours because 
as soon as you realize,
you find yourself limitlessly 
alone with your selves.

The brain vibrates with

_________________
 song 
and you watch the different ways your bodies 
dance in the mirrors.

 

Before you know it, 
the museum crowd pops back around you,
and you unconsciously sway your hips
but still avoid acknowledging 
your reflections. You feel particularly
spooked by ___________________.
                  version of yourself

 

Then—

the display lights shut off,
the other people pause in place,
and that version, backlit by

_______________,

color/kind of light

dissolves out of the mirror to confront you.

What will you say to ________? 
                                pronoun

 

But as your jaw hangs open,
your doppelgänger

blends into just another museum-goer 
and your brain electrocutes itself. 
You are preserved in place,
your arms, hands, fingers

frozen,
your torso statued, 
your legs contorted into a marble base. 
Your eyes can still move,
and you watch the visitors watch you,
wonder if they can see you.
You watch the clock,

the hours tick,
the days grope through you like a ghost,
and at night your thoughts whirl.
You don’t sleep anymore,
and if you do, it’s in the day,
so you can hide from their peering eyes,
their unfettered lives.

 

One day no one comes,
except those who gently pull you 
down, off display, 
and you squint at that damned poster on the wall—
it hangs just out of eye’s reach— 
and you know that the exhibition ended yesterday, 
for it was temporary, after all…  

 

Suddenly 
you wish you would have looked at their eyes 
for a little longer,
maybe actually looked into them, past them,
to their brains.

 

What would you have found there?

Hey! You!

I’ll have your two cents 

on how to have confidence,

just throw it in my hat

and we’ll have a little chat

but later I’ll probably still strip, 

lie flat on my bath mat,

and let my eyes drip 

drip 

     drip…  

 

I turn off the dripping sink:

the inky silence burns my ears. 

I lick the mirror 

trying to taste myself

and my tongue plunges straight through my face.

“What a waste of fucking space!”

I scream into my abyss,  

and my echoes are pissed.

 

I am made of

nothingness

meant for

nothingness

but accepting 

nothingness

feels wrong… 

 

I tap on my skull 

and she cracks open for me,

drops me inside lofty

chambers,

where painters splash me,

sculptors mold me,

but—oh! finally— 

I am folded into alphabetical 

formations

that mirror the structure of my very brain

along the page,

in a unique infinity.

 

Here I wander halls of framed emotions,

hanging in implausible formations.

Re-organized vocabulary 

ferries me through reason’s 

floodgates into

terrifyingly raw seasons.

I’ve found the world inside 

my brain, and 

wait! before I can start mapping,

my skull flap slips and slides me out

with just a song:   

 

…accepting nothingness 

feels wrong…  

 

Right! I’m a living, breathing piece of art

squiggles colored outside the 

lines of poetry scribbled at high tide, 

teary-eyed and giggly 

singing in the car.

 

Come, try to tear me apart!

Until I’m scraps of paper flying through the air,

stop-motion clouds drifting, shapeshifting,

bushels of billowy white grapes  

dribbling sweet wine

into thirsting minds 

lying entwined 

on gingham picnic blankets.

 

Come, lie here with me,

watch the sky here with me,

see my body twinkling 

in every constellation. 

It’s a strange sensation

knowing I am my own 

greatest creation.