She’s actually skinny. She’s on Ozempic, enduring
her small apocalypse: too many jokes about her tiny
arms. She’s had a bad day. If you knew anything
about the T. Rex, you’d know that her favorite
band is Portishead, that she listens to Glory Box
for hours at a time. Some nights, that’s all she does.
She sings until she sleeps, until there’s nothing
left inside but the evaporating dark and piles
of uncooked eggs. In her nightmares, she drowns
her babies in her milk. I just want to be a woman
she sings, and it’s not how you’re envisioning.
Whatever you’re imagining is wrong. There’s
so much you’ll never know. But that’s it, isn’t it?
How we come into these bodies. The day you
were born, even, a lesion. Your screaming mouth
wide as your foundering hope. You, too, a carnivorous
bird, wriggling in the bright room of your skin. Within,
the simple, stunning artifacts of your bones, untouched
through all those mountains of exquisite flesh.