There is mine: a rounded shape
with the usual girl parts. Then there is his–angles and curves–
to fit mine, challenge nerves which had numbed.
A body is as much noun as concept,
referential. To tell anything of my own
I reach for his, pull him
to the page, a disguise
because my skin is itchy as wool. People know me
with my mother or my father, I am both sides of the family,
their echo. I consider action
verbs for my limbs but there are too many to choose
so I focus on limitations. How wrong
when the knee bends backwards, or an elbow inverts,
pokes through skin, what to make of it?
That the threshold for breaking
is intuitive for every body. A ballerina
embodies an aria, an ostrich feather waving in a breeze.
I want to know how she holds
her balance in the fury of spins.
