This
is what it means to be a
body,
blood
streaming down
thighs
in early morning light,
leaving
a
Rorschach image pressed there
in red,
the wings of another possible
body
released
into imagination—
the body
holding itself tightly. The body
aching
to
open, to let go. How can
the body
soothe itself to ease this ache?
How
can
it remember the slack in-
breathing
feeling of no-pain, the gift of pain’s
absence?
It
must try to remember
itself
as the motion of memory
leaves it,
wet
and warm and unstudied—
the body
diverging from itself, another
branch
in the intricate delta of possibility.
Phoebe Reeves earned her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College, and teaches English at the University of Cincinnati’s Clermont College in rural southern Ohio. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Forklift OH, Phoebe, and Best New Poets 2018.