Palms

Location

Palms

 

The first time I talked to you

I looked at my palms

And wondered what it’d feel like to have them suffocated by those webs you call palms

Now I know you can not spin out fibers

To make these maps on your extremities, you are not a spider

But I know you could be clambering up my skin

And kissing me like venom, stinging, until the first time those pincers clasp down

And divorce the gossamer marriage of my top and bottom lips

 

Somehow you got into my bloodstream, as if you went up the water spout of my heart

As if now the itsy-bitsy spider is not a nursery rhyme

But a metaphor of a love tainted by distance and time

Running out and few

 

I looked at the mirror

Dipped in white toothpaste and paper towel residue

And asked myself, “What am I now that I was not before?”

I juiced the new petals of our bathroom decor

And saw not the girl six months ago trapped by fear

But instead a woman, radiant, like the glass bottle, clear

That you picked up that night

Full of golden liquid, ambrosia to the honesty that is hard to find

Golden, like the Holy Grail, hard to find

 

You told me you would pull down trees to save yourself

From the ruins of the bad guys you said, words not from a shelf

“Think as mine and move as mine now”

I looked at the panels of water, no, of silver and glass

A reflection of myself trapped in silver and glass

Like yourself in snow that night the first time

I let my eyes drown in the ocean of your eyes

And my ears plunge in the cascade of your throat’s sighs

The beating of my heart concussed itself to throbbing

 

My dad told me every sound in existence could be reproduced but then

Why can’t I remember the way your voice was when

I made it uneven, shattered, and low

 

When I looked, I saw not the corpse I felt like, varnished in dust from the wind that toppled me

Six months prior, no, I saw not the black and blue body, brother to a bruise

Nor the body of a twentieth century shot down Kaiser

The first time I talked to you

I felt my heart overflow

The blood trickling from my veins to the trenches in my palms

Wondering what it’d feel like to have them sewn together by those strands of silk you call palms

Comments

clarrrrissa

Sounds much better read aloud and with inflection, but I was unable to use a phone or other device to record myself reciting it. Essentially, it is about self growth made by the help of a loved individual. Some stanzas hard to understand, but if thought through hard enough, make sense. Thanks so much! :)

clarrrrissa

Sounds much better read aloud and with inflection, but I was unable to use a phone or other device to record myself reciting it. Essentially, it is about self growth made by the help of a loved individual. Some stanzas hard to understand, but if thought through hard enough, make sense. Thanks so much! :)

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