(no subject)
i.
Ignore the skin, thin and superficial, plastic wrap atop a bowl of jello,
muscle’s not it either, wet meat like the packets in the supermarket,
down, down deeper, past the bone, the marrow, past the blood cells, not there yet,
deeper, deeper, deeper than that?
Digging to China in the yard, through the molten core and out the other side,
and what did you expect to find down there among the fossils?
ii.
Feel happy in your face and cheeks and eyes.
Feel sad inside your mouth and nose, wet pressure on your teeth.
Feel anxious in your belly, twisting, chill, and liquid.
Feel them in the soft grey vulnerability inside your head, indefinable, subjective, immeasurable, a disordered firing of impulse,
call it categorizable, knowable, definite,
call it you.
iii.
Find yourself twelve again, thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen and it happens, finally, a definition, a change
you’ve been waiting for for years, sliding and painful
and you don’t feel any different, not at all,
did you really think that this would solve you?
You did?
iv.
Digging deeper, not there yet, not yet there,
how far, how long, how deep
until you set the shovel down and say,
enough,
I am enough?
Ignore the skin, thin and superficial, plastic wrap atop a bowl of jello,
muscle’s not it either, wet meat like the packets in the supermarket,
down, down deeper, past the bone, the marrow, past the blood cells, not there yet,
deeper, deeper, deeper than that?
Digging to China in the yard, through the molten core and out the other side,
and what did you expect to find down there among the fossils?
ii.
Feel happy in your face and cheeks and eyes.
Feel sad inside your mouth and nose, wet pressure on your teeth.
Feel anxious in your belly, twisting, chill, and liquid.
Feel them in the soft grey vulnerability inside your head, indefinable, subjective, immeasurable, a disordered firing of impulse,
call it categorizable, knowable, definite,
call it you.
iii.
Find yourself twelve again, thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen and it happens, finally, a definition, a change
you’ve been waiting for for years, sliding and painful
and you don’t feel any different, not at all,
did you really think that this would solve you?
You did?
iv.
Digging deeper, not there yet, not yet there,
how far, how long, how deep
until you set the shovel down and say,
enough,
I am enough?