I favorite pictures of women in red,
women bound by rope from wrist
to elbow, held out at the perfect angle for a photo.
Women thighs only, a hand placed
perhaps tenderly between.
I fall into spirals of thought, craving that
which entices the hunger;
I swallow bodies instead of food.
usually facing a high wooden bridge;
men with their beards grown in, rough.
My father never had much facial hair, but still
I associate the scritch with that tender love. My father
who shaved to spare his daughterâs cheeks.
men taking womenâs hands from them
dismantling battering rams, men the hard to their soft.
Men their arms contorted about their heads,
backs supine and roped by muscles.
Women photographs of clothing, laid out as if a
had merely slipped in and out within a millisecond.
like a cat following a marked path through its neighborhood,
I tested the bounds of my sanity, tested
I would line the photos up, horizontal, vertical, by date taken, by artist name.
I folded pieces of who I was
into each one, thinner and thinner;
I saved this one when I was suicidal,
this one an hour later, when I had cried the space in my body
This one the first time I wrote a poem for the bodies.
Lines of poems I still recall,
words that came to my tongue like
my mind was buttered, lit on fire.
Emotions flurrying, the rapture of not being alone
Bodies contorted, bodies in forced light,
bodies titled âaudibleâ âweird fishesâ â167â âsomebody to love,â
others which only I remember.
A photograph of a girl perched in a windowsill encapsulated in light.
I titled the poem âsmother,â and the imagery was red,
Most others were inspirations for
Spines exposed, high exposure lighting.
A man with a magnifying glass, investigating a womanâs wrist,
A friend with off-center hips, long hair disguising what was left of the breasts,
arms hung with what was left, head separated by the frame of the picture
from what was left. She said, I am posting this so that I may
take back what is left, to scare myself into pulling away and
I tried reeling in these parts of me.
Now I flicker through them, recognize the moments
when I was neither here nor there nor somewhere in between.
A self-portrait of myself,
wrists taking up the entire space meant for the body.
I was never not her. When there was an âall
that is left,â I was her.
trying to reconnect us two, never
to rework those sparse lines into hopeful poems.
Sickness, I acknowledge you as
The last saved photo: a woman in red, arms thrown wide,
caught up by the wind. Captured by the enormity of what is left.
Me. I hit enter twice, start
