notes on bodies, being “boy”,
blue, brokenness

1.

sometimes i look up
and imagine the blueness beneath me
my souls touch the ceiling
blood rushing
nothing but belief
keeping my heart in its place
by blueness i mean breathless
i mean glittering expanse,
infinite mess
sinking, swallowing
something out of nothing
blood and brokenness
ocean and moon

by moon i mean me
proverbial androgyne
my solvent—Sophie
archetypal, carved from
the recycled clay of
every sparkly enby
in transit toward presence—embodied breath, beating,
breaking heart
blow me a kiss?
cause if i’m the moon then you’re shadow
—i cast you
i create you
i dream you
we are held apart—unfathomable,
unfound. this is what i mean when i say
i want to be naked with you
not for sex
but for knowing

by knowing
i mean howling
i mean the screech
of sharing true names
touch this skin
touch all this skin—
abrasive heart, feral
soul
tell me i’m real
without telling me i’m real

by real i mean less
i mean lack thereof
i mean peel away my skin,
sinew, bone
till i am nothing more than
heart—faceless
genderless, bodyless
cageless

this isn’t so much a poem
as it is a severance,
a metaphor for
the burden of body
a yearning for departure,
decadence, diffusion

this isn’t so much a story
as it is a savoring
put me in your mouth
i’ll rest my head on your tongue,
next to enamel
we can watch the stars together
and imagine ourselves cast
in sky—
our bodies, celestial

2.
i often don’t know whether i’m carrying my body or it’s carrying me

this is old code made new
i eat 0s and 1s for breakfast
with oat milk and frozen blueberries
i smoke cigarettes because they taste like a memory
this algorithm emerged from
the infrastructure of my suffering
coded to love too much,
give good head,
and dread what it means
when someone says
i’m sorry
i’m sorry
i’m sorry

i don’t want this to stop
the way you touch
the way you dream
the sun feels like life but it won’t keep us from dying
if i could curl up on your chest
and stay there forever
i think i would
if my blood could escape my body
and become it’s own
i think it would

this body is just a means to end, meaning,
in the end, all that really matters is
us, in this moment. meaning,
if i meant to touch you, you’d know.
meaning, if i told you i loved you
you’d feel it. meaning,
i don’t want to mean anymore. meaning, mostly
i’m tired of trying so hard to feel,
to make you feel

a good fuck means nothing
if your skin isn’t yours
a good fuck means nothing
if you aren’t allowed to dream

i don’t know what it’s like
to be heartless,
but if i did, i think i would forget
what the sun feels like



3.
i wish i wasn’t so insoluble—
that someone or something could dissolve me—
like salt in water or the honey in my peppermint tea
but then i drank the moon and then you drank me
and i became the ocean, light tugging
at the ends of me, my heart
spilling out, wrapping itself around the world we built, sinking into the earth,
sinking into all of you

the two of us—a cyber goth fairy
and a girlboy wearing nothing
but a fur coat—looked up at the sky and breathed
in the fullness of the moon, gasped
as we lost ourselves
found ourselves
lost ourselves
found ourselves
i discovered something inside myself—my name
—i said it softly and then you said it back
and my heart leapt
and i knew—Ell

i took everything off and then i was naked
and then you were all naked and we were floating away
i realized, in that moment,
that we were things cosmic, rising
up from our bodies,
dissolving, molecularizing, dispersing
across the macrocosm, unflinched
as we stared back at ourselves,
back at our world,
up at the moon
unspooled, undone,
unfathomable, forever,
fleeting, and then falling—falling back
to our bodies—falling back
to the earth—falling
asleep, with bjork whistling in our ears
and our limbs stretched across each other,
a mess of skin and bone and feeling
and knowing
and hope
and love

4.
today i am boy
heart humming, hope tender
blue you
blue me
let’s fade together
turn violet, let the moonlight
soften us, tomorrow
we will be corporeal
tomorrow we will touch
for now, let’s flux
the world reaches for us
our edges peel away
like soft leather of fruit
left behind—sweet and
saccharine, a core of hope you can taste
with your hands
or your heart
tomorrow i am they
i’ll paint my face for you to match my heart
and we can turn the sun blue



5.
this isn’t an ending,
rather, a bending
toward new truth
maybe an undoing
emblematic of evolution,
emancipation,
entropy—a breaking,
a shattering—because
the truth is
we are never not broken
never not splitting

this isn’t death or dust
or despair

this is living
this is hope

now take the splintered pieces
of yourself
use them as a terrain
of discovery,
of healing,
of becoming

and every time you break
recreate yourself
because in recreating yourself,
you’ll recreate the world

6.
i want to be able to cut open a word and peer inside it, push its insides out, let everything fall from within. now it’s a new thing
stretch the fabric of the new thing so it’s roomier, big enough for me to step inside and walk around, take a seat, admire the feng shui
i have ideas for how to make it better, more me. put that thing there and that thing there, squish those things closer together, fill it up with orange, not citrusy orange, more muted and earthy, like the midtones in an oversaturated film photo, burnt and thirsty
and an ocean, i want an ocean right in the middle so i can lay in it and float and forget and then cough when the salt water gets up my nose, burning my nostril but it’s a good burning the burning of aliveness and heart full and me
i take a step back, step out
i look inside the stretched out word—it’s mine now. i made it

i made it and it’s for me and not you
my word
my world