The Body

for Ish Klein

Eric says all my dreams are in my body
All my bad dreams
About betrayal
I don’t want to be in this body anymore
That holds all the betrayal of the universe
Its tissues bluing all day into blue-black
Blood balloon
One day all that blood will be dark and grey
I want to be an unearthly body instead of this one
I want to be a body that is free of dreams
The imagination
I never wanted the imagination within my legs and arms anyway
Blacking within it like forgotten light
Umbrella limbs full of potential light
I never wanted to be the person who tells you
That I believe in you
So that you never had to listen to anyone else
I never wanted
You to forget about me
Freeze me into arctic lust
Until I am never the body
That is amber in the sun
The people, I never wanted the people
To touch my body like they owned it
In dreams
On earth
In real life
I wanted people to believe in my body for once
Not my dreams
That you can walk through in wonderment
Because they are so beautiful
The whole world, the people
They never believed in my body
They only ever believed in their own bodies
Walking and talking
Through the world
Mimetic knights
The people
They only ever believed in their own similar bodies
Flattened pieces of videotape
Matted pictures, red and black
And twinned
The twinned heads and feet
The pickled noses, the twins
The people
Lost and adorned
They only ever believed in the things that were similar
They only ever believed in the cold