Claire Simpson

“Touch was absolutely
out of the question. I couldn’t stop sweating. My heart, a butterfly pinned
to a glacier. Empires fell inside my mouth. I touched myself like a pogrom
& broke my sex into a history of inconsequential shames. I wept viciously
inside of my own stomach & had it condemned. From an upside-down bell
I drank silence, subsisted on the memory of someone else’s hands. Wolves
sang & I did not answer. I forgot their names. Mornings were the worst, then
there were days & evenings. Streetlights & darkened sycamore & suburban
grief so full it made me foolish. I shattered my fist on the Lord’s jaw. Sorrow
sat, licking my wrists & my neck. I slept at its convenience. O, uncelebrated
body. My penis, a lighthouse on the bottom of the ocean, shining shadows
at the undersides of boats. Nobody drowned for so many years. Desperate
for the making of those candy-throated ghosts, I found the rooms between
the violence of comets. I threw myself into anything’s path. Even the sky
bent around me. How lonely to be something that nothing wants to kill. (So I Locked Myself Inside A Star for Twenty Years)”
― Jeremy Radin