by Kelsey Liu.
“save the hands for last,” i murmur;
each finger is a joyous petal to pluck.
cut the fat from your sides first,
little slivers of skin shriveling
in shamed unwantedness,
curls of blood erased from your weight
-ed down
half-corpse, a drowned package of leaves and lilies.
“this is a nightmare,” you choke,
the curtains peeled off;
windows carved into your burdensome body
budding with swelling rivulets of blood,
ironic sap–
vampiric re-undoing.
“i know,” i nuzzle with my nails,
picking and
peeling
layers of pink new growth from your legs,
chewed wires.
“i think i would understand.”
hairs cut like carnation stems
slice into the back of your neck.
i hold you, caress your revelationary mouth:
“do you
feel beautiful yet?”
yellow lumps of fat pulled
from reeking inner thighs.
lorde’s forgotten erotic;
“yes!”
sobbing a song through the orgasm,
leave your girlfriend
(i love, all parts of you
yet still, sympathy pangs)
for yourself.
eyes cast to the ground
in anticipatory demurement,
snip off your eyelashes
and string them into a soundless wind-chime,
blow them apart with a simple
relieved exhalation.
“yes. . .”
without
-toes little taproots to reality,
-knots in your calves,
-construction ball knees,
-cresting hips cement-cast like a mounting for the wall,
such buoyancy!
hated slave to gravity no more,
liberation & freedom & the hot pulsing light
at the end of the
unplugged aorta!
pull the rib-cage apart,
revel in the natural grain of meat,
strip by strip
down:
celestially, there is no flesh.
“i can’t bear it!”
lick your lips.
bite them, bleed
them, kiss them good-bye;
two strokes later:
only a pair of arms
trembling with ecstatic proximity
and one, two feverish palms
that slowly,
deliciously,
slide the bones out.
i collect
the hands.
darling, look at you!
finally free–
swimming in the aether
like a singing sphere
of reclaimed dark matter.