My Soul is a String by Alexander Bridge

My Soul is a String

My soul is a string that runs down my middle From the base of my throat to the plane of my coccyx And widens itself into an infinite regression And is tightened by my love It does not meet my neck, and it does not reach my bowels, And it loosens when I relax my legs in bed

When I think that I can only sleep in the dark and not the light I feel my soul in my navel and roll over And think that I love my girl so much- she is very small, and she is okay, And I travel to her a hallway and staircase away Then I eat on the things that she lays in her bed And end all her poems with anger and death, and with my thrashing and my striking I kill my girl with words I know how to use.

My girl has me pick her up sometimes and stretch my soul out over my own back And she feels her back crack by her shoulder blades and loves me And my soul is a string like a blade of glass that will never itself snap Then I must love my girl, I love her and screw myself up into a ball And pinch the strings beneath my throat and smile and swallow all by myself And bend my eyes up and stretch out my back like an animal on tarmac

I feel my soul when I sigh and become lines on a rack Or a depth of black water, My soul is a string that restricts my own breath I am choked for words sometimes, But I find them again from nowhere when my skin becomes one thing Stretched round and round me into my armpits,

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it flashes beneath my neck into the shooting pains of life Then my limbs become limbs away from my soul, outside and thickened

My girl lives in her bed only these days She sleeps but a hallway and staircase away I eat chips and popcorn and cooked fish in her bed And all our bad writing is ending in death.

Alexander Bridge

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