#benderpoet

I wedge my hand inside a jar so similar to the wedge of last night when I plunged it through the rubber mouth of the garbage disposal to retrieve raspberries, almost like my hand no longer fits anywhere it wants or needs to go

but of course what is really happening is I am animalizing again, I cross my nearly willing way to the side of wild and drag a heavy blanket of blur over the world until all I see through my thorough distortion is a deprivation

I don't really see so much as swallow swallow and swallow, as us famished creatures in the woods cannot afford to be precious about a hand, and in fact, I remember there are tools, fancy sticks for scraping out cavities this dark and

cramped where fingers can't quite reach and the tips by touch must dangerously fill in for vision (there will be no snake spiraled in the sink who may startle and strike, but the human body will always believe in the snake, in her fangs) but

they are shut in drawers several inches away, and there is not a moment to waste in wild, nor a want I want to tame with forethought; I lift my pinched fingers loose and drag my tongue hard through thick deposits of oil and chocolate, my knuckles

streaked brown like those of a toddler teaching itself feces, and in the frenzy I misplace pain, misplace squeamishness and disgust, am left only with the familiar chaos of the kitchen, kitchen light, kitchen hum, kitchen’s fresh kill, as if in another

rendering I am the predator or scavenger who slides her arms inside a steaming stomach up to the elbows and delivers a value menu burger, a clean and dry contrast to sleeves of blood that start at the wrists and fade to faint stains crowning her cold cheeks

Old magazines filled with nothing. What a waste. The bed with the paper bitches about flesh and leakage and how they all beg for the gift-wrapped fiction of their bodies,

for someone to tie it up nicely with ornamental knot, to figure it out, figure it out, for the love of god, once and for all. The nurse laughs and types up the symptoms and

checks all the boxes. One box is on the floor calling out numbers, more numbers to note. The plastic nipple pokes into a tepid ear. As of this moment I still have all my clothes on,

but he comes, listens and thinks. Thinks and thinks. And says the pants have to go, and we both reach for the button and zipper. I'm certain there's something to be said for hesitation

in this instant but his fingers and thumbs unfasten me and that can't be right. What was that. This keeps getting messier, and I am tilting and pale above the fabric, which I only now

realize is also me, while he gloves a hand and finishes what I started. Centuries since a skilled doctor would sample my blood, give my urine a taste, we fumble around in this dark intimacy like nothing

has changed. He whips out a six-syllable condition to defend himself, followed by a definition which includes it could go away, it could get worse, it could matter or not. Further tests could

be more definitive or as definitive as they've been so far. But my age, risks, and family history. But my anxiety. But my pain rating and femaleness, but just in case. He's thinking.

—

Seven times I forget to tell you I love you because a hair has bent over so far it's growing back into my skin.

I slowly pick a scab on my face during your story about work.

I joke that my body is its own separate entity, that it's me and my body. But it's you and me and my body, and

too much of the time,

you and my body alone, and god knows where I've disappeared to.

—

in your note you put many commas, and commas where commas weren't even needed, so I know

you were thoughtful and worried. I wish I had the superpower of reading the minds of punctuation;

maybe each little curve of flip- flop would tell me a story, of placement, of being locked down,

in you. Instead we've stumbled past the moments when you had the courage again, and again, and again.

—

I built butterfly bushes in the backyard and captured the flying creatures, when they came, sometimes with nets, sometimes by hand plucking them from a flower after approaching on quiet, patient toes. I released them into the tiny mesh cage and rubbed my fingers together to dislodge swallowtail or monarch dust.

I filled the home with fresh flowers and at times pushed in a gleaming sugar cube to make their tongues roll out and jab like foils, a frenzied fight for life in controlled circumstances. When they died, I gathered a new batch and began again to cultivate a paradise they'd want, a place they'd thrive, always. I became pregnant.

—

a woman on her phone says: well they have one pie crust but it's cracked

and I know we have enough sugar but I'm not sure how much flour we have left so could you check

and we all hold our breath in the silence not wanting to walk away from such ordinary

unsolved mystery or go anywhere near the man further down who looks so unhappy over bread

—

When some poor little girl of twenty-two asked her what difference there was between one week, four years, or a LIFETIME, she first breathed a sigh of relief, because this girl was not her real daughter who would one day think of the thought of the end, wake with questions, set panic to her mother, set her searching for those impossible words to make a child understand, and then she began to speak, slowly and carefully, of the long-term goals a person maps, sometimes with no awareness of them, watching grandchildren grow, or simply becoming a completion like the completed people all around you, becoming yourself, watching your daughter at her wedding and knowing that not only does she not have cold feet, but she is warm all over, lit by the manifestation of someone you dreamed for her hard and idealistically. The girl took the information into her little fighting body and tried to simplify it, a reason to care: goals, and perhaps more importantly, goals involving people you loved, or people you loved that were young enough to matter, but she was still apt to believe it was about time until, an average bracket: if you get as much time as most, as much time as can be called lucky, this gift is acceptable. The gift given and later taken back. Come to think of it, it's all, well, wrong, but with every story added to her collection somehow more well-rounded. All this on the fresh heels of tragedy, not even her own, in which a girl of ten did crawl into bed with her dead mother and saw there was no breath left in her and…It's horrible that she has to go live with her father and stepmother now, they say, she doesn't even like them. But has she gotten there yet, or is today only about abandonment? Is today only about looking as far as you can down this out-of-nowhere going-nowhere road? Is today only for starting to cry every other minute when you count the number of people you will have to seduce into loving you to make up for the one you couldn't have?

—

oh friend, I'm sure you would not have hesitated in the hallway like I did

when a boy wanted to kiss me, because kissing after a while

becomes like learning to walk, where you don't think too much

about it, there is simply a table or chair or other piece of furniture

you use to pull yourself to your legs at last, feels like forever

you have been waiting for those steps, then another forever

for the softness of someone else's lips on yours, nervous, at the door

as you're saying goodbye, this was nice, thank you for the bear, I'll see you

at school tomorrow? but then there was only my palm lifting

in what was meant to be a wave but I knew was also, secretly, stop,

this is not right, this is not right, and him waving back

as if he was not thinking of every girl in our class who had graduated

from not kissing to kissing to hand jobs long ago, of, dear lord,

someone easier, and me telling myself when it's right, I'll know,

right? when it's the right time, I'll …just know? because

it had to be that I was not ready, this the only explanation

I could offer myself, one year before the lips of my best friend

as she lay beside me on the bed became all I could think about, and

never once am I ready for this step, but oh god, how much longer? now?

—