Coupled above the asphalt
My body has cells that will not be scattered
by anything other than the sound of the sea.
Its hands are as wrinkled as a petrified forest
or a crushed satin dress.
My body can instantly recall the smell of leaking ink
and the sight of white butterflies
coupled above the asphalt.
My body cannot heal itself except in a mirror,
my mind removed so far as it is
from its own scaffolding, its skeletal frame.
My body has heard a million lawnmowers,
a thousand times the sound of a dog lapping water,
likes the smell of fermenting plums, dark-red,
defaced by birds.
My body remembers the smell of fat, of grass,
of fresh earth. My body tastes salt on its lips,
the sting from a cut on the side of its tongue.
My body watches. Breathes. Fingers the bark of a tree,
the seed, the grain, the white meat inside the shell.
Like a dog that likes to be where its owner is,
my body likes to be where I am.
—Kay McKenzie Cooke (Kay's website); appeared in "Canopic Jar 35: an anthology"