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"