WE ARE ALL MADE OF WAX

Would you like to read a poem with no consequences? My first is of a white something in a sea of blue something and I am floating in it. But the tongue in my throat felt like a fish blowing bubbles. And I have to ask: what is he looking for? It is bloated or it is gnawing. These are my extremes: for a long time I was blurry; I couldn’t believe I was failing so soon. I ate carrots. I drank glasses of milk. And what for? I know—the little bronze dancer, the one with her fingers knotted behind her back, she was a little rat. I’m not making that up. So when I slept in the dark and there were somethings in the air, shapes so close with no boundaries, no touchings, I left the lights on. I did it for her. She was called Marie. I’m learning French, did you hear? And it sounds pretentious, but I’d like to turn my pelvis inside out. To powerwash all of it, every nook. But his eyes were always too far apart. I never could land. He said: how abstract you have become. I mean untroubled by distortions. I said: I am smoothing my wrinkles out. I like the boy with glasses pushing my book down for a better look. It’s about a little dancer. You can go see her. She and I were floating on a boat, I think. How charming it is to come from water. But even in our togetherness there is a loneliness that cannot be rocked, cannot sit down, cannot crawl out of my inside place.

Audrey Pettit