RAW POETRY Rebecca Neary

i want to be raw.

i want to pull my eyeballs out, and dip them in a glass of cool water.

i want to slowly, and gently, remove my spine and work over the vertebrae, cracking one knot at a time.

i want to scrape just the top layer of skin off of my body, until i’m smooth, shiny, and pink.

i want to cut the dead ends of each individual strand of hair on my head by my own hand. it means something more to be done by yourself, for yourself.

a cut of meat prepared by a chef means something more when the calf was killed from their own pasture.

i am the chef.

i am the calf.

i am a stone plucked from my own yard begging to be tumbled, to be scratched, to be polished. desperate to be rubbed raw.