Photo by Rosie Lopolito
Home, Unaccompanied
After Monica Youn
Gravedigger’s clothes should be splattered
with cemeteries’ grey-green soil to signal
loyalty to the dead, and likewise
this gangrene jumpsuit needs a shroud,
dusty embrace from a dryad, blossoming
into decay. Cover me, clay crackles,
unweighted, unscented, and free
from the miasma of mud out here—
this dirt is not clean but cursed: the bones know
the skin left them for the silver-flecked
starlings to pick at instead. Sharp and cold
in the studio, the air smells heavy, sick,
sweet outside, benzene and grape
vapor. Film sticks to exposed skin,
exposed peach strips, gory
orange smear on the horizon,
oozing eye half-shut squinting
wishing she could peel off this
dirty scab, and today maybe I wish
she would, too. I am
the voyeur here looking down
upon my own puppet
legs jerking on loose strings across
a sidewalk strewn with Fritos
bags. it only takes one
to be embarrassed
to be alive and I am
one and both. This is the problem:
I don’t know if I’m alive
unless I’m seen and touched:
Insert Schrodinger on
solitude. I am a liminal space
collapsing
into a liminal space,
a blackhole,
a tightrope
stretching from point A
to you, and I fear I will die
if I veer off that shred of existence.
Is this what being alone is?
Three men in polo shirts leave the
church and cross the street and
I am yanked from within
myself. Grounded by footsteps
not my own, I breathe.
My chest unzips over
the sternum to let whistling air floss
ugly grimacing teeth clamped
around tight lungs and I wonder
if they are why I can’t catch a fulfilling
breath. I didn’t realize this takes so much
longer alone, after waiting like a fool,
but how could I have known
we got out early
just got home
Kindergarten 