The body now, the body before, the body that comes back to you again, as if you walk into the mirror, merge the vision of yourself with yourself. Touch your hands into the silver reflection: this wetness, you imagine, dripping in what could be mercury, shine, how you can’t hold onto any light. You are nothing, you are springboard, you are not even wet.
The body now, the body before, all the bodies of the future, as if you could reach into the water and pull yourself, gasping and bloody, to the surface. As if you could cradle her arms and, dripping, sleep.
Callista Buchen is the author of Look Look Look, forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press, and the chapbooks The Bloody Planet (Black Lawrence Press, 2015) and Double-Mouthed (dancing girl press, 2016). Her work appears in Harpur Palate, Puerto del Sol, Fourteen Hills, and many other journals, and she is the winner of the Langston Hughes Award and DIAGRAM’s essay contest. She teaches at Franklin College, where she advises the student literary journal and directs the visiting writers’ reading series.