form

A Poem by Miss Coral

brought to something I thought was gone; a languid love, a godliness, weeping because the silence breaks my back when I relearn to breathe�" I have a singer’s breath, at least, but lost in my thoughts my lungs are still and my hands are still and my throat has forgotten to swallow and for a moment, my heart is not there. I have boxed it into a metronome and caught my head in the gears. I am still unsure if I wanted it stopped.

everything you’ve ever said is something I’ve thought and I’m still wondering where my mind is stopped, where yours begins, where you found the words. if I have my thoughts at all; ownership is said to be a concept. I don’t see why blood and skin and bone and soul is any different.

my fingers are pressed as roots and my eyes want to close, a habitual sleep but blindness is the only sin I will not commit, is the only sin that I have cried for when you swallowed up my pupils, plucked and sucked and fucked, because blindness is acceptable only in that I am still�" I am listening�" I am hearing�" I am feeling the rush of blood, the sheets against my toes, the curve and press and weight of my back�" the arch and the bend and the flatness of planes and angles and soft divots of bone and muscle. the rise of my stomach, the touch of my thighs and knees, the balls of my feet tingling, the way that skin feels and the heaviness of having a body, wondering where form is, how light can hold so much�" so much. you have put a finger on my spine, and pushed, and I�"

I have yielded, and wept, for the joy of it.

even now, I breathe and count, feel my teeth kiss my bottom lip with the words, the skin of my face tighten with my drying tears, and I wonder where I am, where I have been.