paradoxcycle
Bluelight Crew
you eventually heal.
sometimes, a long time after the skin has been pulled taut around the wounds, proof of the struggle will linger within your body, as an after-image.
perhaps there will be a bone jutting in an awkward angle from beneath the soft skin at your hip, or a vein running up the back of your leg with less blood than there should be, caught like a fool by your perpetual thirst.
in the early evening, i undress and, for a moment, i stand in front of the bathroom mirror like a cold thing; i worry that this long journey has made me hard.
i poke at the places where i am sore from trying to lift too heavy a weight, then buckling and bruising beneath it, but all i can feel is the sweet dull beating of my breath like the wings of an oriole caught in a summer storm.
i remember when i was young and elastic; i loved nothing then, and everything. an affair could not hurt me more than a groggy hangover or a peculiar light. rape could hurt me only as much as trust could hurt me. i woke each morning like a ghost of myself, free to be impressed and awed. because no matter how lightly the world touched me, i noticed the touch.
the wind kissed the back of my neck, sunlight could raze me. now the wind tattoos my body, claws at my throat.
you heal eventually,
but at the end
you can be only as whole
and aching
as you were when your small story began.
you will never again feel more than the improper annunciation of desire.
sometimes, a long time after the skin has been pulled taut around the wounds, proof of the struggle will linger within your body, as an after-image.
perhaps there will be a bone jutting in an awkward angle from beneath the soft skin at your hip, or a vein running up the back of your leg with less blood than there should be, caught like a fool by your perpetual thirst.
in the early evening, i undress and, for a moment, i stand in front of the bathroom mirror like a cold thing; i worry that this long journey has made me hard.
i poke at the places where i am sore from trying to lift too heavy a weight, then buckling and bruising beneath it, but all i can feel is the sweet dull beating of my breath like the wings of an oriole caught in a summer storm.
i remember when i was young and elastic; i loved nothing then, and everything. an affair could not hurt me more than a groggy hangover or a peculiar light. rape could hurt me only as much as trust could hurt me. i woke each morning like a ghost of myself, free to be impressed and awed. because no matter how lightly the world touched me, i noticed the touch.
the wind kissed the back of my neck, sunlight could raze me. now the wind tattoos my body, claws at my throat.
you heal eventually,
but at the end
you can be only as whole
and aching
as you were when your small story began.
you will never again feel more than the improper annunciation of desire.
