obscure myself
1. a body of fuzz composite
No matter how hard you squint, you will not discern me. A suggestion more than a construction, I float through the city’s sunset towers. You dreamt of me last night, seizing, all coarse edges and opaque gesticulation.
I have become unpolished. I am tossed in circular motion against the anti-grit of soft voices. Sticky gloss collides with my epidermis, unevenly waxing my cells toward static distortion.
Years spent seeking legibility in the stars. Saturn regresses me.
A haunting. A reminder.
3. a waning moon
Dipping my fingers in hot wax and peeling it back, rendering my hand a twitching bundle of exposed nerves.
Should I simply live, and then die?
What a thin slice of fruit. What a blip.
My skin
melanates demarcations from sun exposure, wrinkles from laughter, thins and stretches to envelop my soft tissues.
Steps in time steal my hard lines and reveal a rougher shape, alone and prostrated in acceptance. I am flaying myself and wearing my outer layer in reverse, revealing cotton balls of stuffing where there were once knee joints.
4. but what am I meaning to say?
Nothing grandiose, no, nothing revelatory. The opposite: I conceal myself.
A geological layering of trips around the sun of walks to the bodega of pimples popped of soups boiled of hurricanes
Thirty years seems a small enterprise at the onset of such pain and pleasure.
5. the animal in me hides in caves.
The animal in me fears the reaper. The animal in me cowers in the face of love. The animal in me cries out for my mother. The animal in me is pumped full of endorphins when I press my sleepy cheek against yours. The animal in me craves the release of a fist against stone. The animal in me knows what is next.
All this navel-gazing has folded me in half.
inspired by mame-diarra niang’s portrait series, “morphologie du rêve”