Page 8 - Chimera by Hannah Sheridan

March 10, 2018
Is there a word
For when my fingernails turn to beeswax drips down my hands
When I am frozen and all I can do is laugh belly chuckle that grates
Makes the tendons in my neck
Strain for release until my sunset
cheeks fade to twilight
I beg her
Is there?
She takes my jaw, brushes it shut Soothes the birds under my skin back to their roosts
She says
yes
That is when sand grinds into the lines ofmy palms
The fabric ofmy socks
Follows me for a week behind my ears
I wash wash wash my body, the laundry machine tumbles
an eternity offractured
mineral that laminates me
allthesame
Is it futile to chip away replaceable dust?
But it was as beeswax hardened that we collapsed on tiles of a blinding
public bathroom, clutched each other’s bones together as they threatened to flee
This is when she told me
my ribs have echoed with morse code for seventeen
eighteen? years
i confess
i never learned to speak the languages Printed on patterns of crows’ wings Until I met her
The way the fibers fray
Cross and interplay
Is it futile to chip away replaceable dust?
Exhausted and weak
My body stops its convulsions and rests Poisons gone for now but what awaits?
I lean against cool white and catch
her eye in the bathroom mirror
Brown and round, it looks like mine Emerges fresh from waxy cataracts before beginning once again