Whe the Body Doesn’t

Writing by Marina Carreira

                                         Art by Melanie Lee

When the Body Doesn’t

it waits still. Some

times, hands folded

knees together, 

back flat against back 

against wall, dead 

silent. Other times, 

flailing like salmon 

streaming up, singing 

aloud and about

the dark times.

*

how to figure out

the way to figure 

this out. This change 

in current, white water 

to smoky creek, 

typhoon to low tide

singing in the dark 

to singing to the dark 

*

A shell thrown back 

onto shore. Jagged 

from the journey 

of not loving you 

while wanting you 

or maybe not enough 

of either.

*

I still have my song, 

spun so deep inside 

me it’s only a beating

When the Body Doesn’t: Redux

I never needed to be touched

the way I do now. There are reasons 

for this, none of which have anything to do 

with how much fucking has become baptism.

I never needed to fuck this much, 

this hard, this often, this incessantly, cunt-insisting. 

When my body doesn’t fuck enough,

It Benjamin-Buttons back to fetal, feral. 

Never been the one to lead the way to the bed  

but today, and now, and in a few minutes and hours 

and tonight here forward, I want every fucking minute 

to count while fucking, I want to count every minute 

I’m fucking you, fingers boring to and through,

prying you open while I pray you don’t snap 

like a clam but pearl instead in my palm instead, 

please let me. Please touch this body the way 

you used to, but harder. Farther, for it is no longer 

the same body. This one needs more 

hand and less heart, a siren stronger than moon 

to make it glow. It needs a beating 

and if you push yours against mine, 

you might just hear it, 

the brash 

pulsing of a dying star. 

#YourPussy

A bowl of cold strawberries 

on the sill. 

I think about this 

quite often.

My greed over your every 

freckle and follicle, 

knuckle deep 

in Love. 

Now I know hunger: 

a bird, humming and whet.

I am terrified of being 

this happy.