​wrestle room
​bella blue


wrestling bodies, there
are limbs in all corners of this room.
i’d say i
was a circus but that would be
ignoring yesterday morning’s panic attack-
recently, it’s
like the awareness of how porous my brain is has
me forgetting
all the lines in this house
all the boys who walk
on their femininity like egg shells:
maybe before i was definitely a dog, but these days
i’m mostly a fish, slipping in and out of myself. like i’m
shedding, maybe a bearded dragon
would’ve been a better metaphor.
​
every boy who’s forced
submission into me
is peeling 
my mind like a banana, current mood
being the banana’s exposed, pale middle fruit.
what’s the difference
between bites of guilt and bites of pleasure? between
algebra, geometry, the number of hits
my friend is taking? lanky and hair fussy
humidity  melding his body
to oakland's sidewalk,
the concrete staircase. when we’re
older, the memory of him will remind me of
the goodness in indulgence; indulgent reminding
me of who i’ve been trying to keep out
of my stomach.

my body wrapped unwillingly around
another was still
in my possession that transitional spring. i wish
i had this knowledge when noticing the bus
seats were blue with white stripes.
there are no reasons, only justifications.
my psychiatrist in the
heat of july and five pm,
he’s telling me
how to stitch
up an act of childhood, without
becoming the knot,
stretching           and        contorting
holding
self together.  

we sip conflicted impulses,
i want to feel as out
of body as possible        simultaneously yearning
                                              for the sensation of dirt.
by dirt i mean ground. by ground
i mean, the ability to recognize
myself as a tangible now. lake merritt, six pm,
we were  there. stealing extra candy from the eye glass
shop candy bowl, i was there. at seven i could carry three
tootsie rolls in my hand, now probably five.  i feel no bigger
than i did on the bus back from novato, my hands
twisting the flesh of my cuticles, cuticles twisting
the perception of these hands.

​
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