Me, (before and after) you.
Excerpt/ example of longer poetry.
An ethereal exploration of identity and agency through recurring metaphors of smoke and clay, questioning who shapes us and reclaiming autonomy from those who would mould us into their ideal.
We are standing outside a bar, or maybe a club. It doesn't really matter. We are drunk.
You are smoking, and I am watching you watch the smoke as it dissolves into the air.
I ask if you ever wish you could capture the smoke in a jar. You say you don’t.
I think maybe that isn’t true.
I say that it’s beautiful. You say that I am. I think maybe you don’t understand what I mean.
I say that on second thought, it would be cruel to capture the smoke when it’s designed to disappear.
You reach out and try to grasp it. I watch as it slips through your fingers. You open your palm, and it’s gone. You put out your cigarette and grab my hand, pulling me back inside.
I think it would be nice to get to leave like the smoke.
I think it would be fun to exist only as a way to leave.
I’m worried you’ve figured out how to keep me in that jar after all.
We are sitting on a couch. Or maybe we are sitting in a clay-making class.
You are pressed against my side. It is uncomfortably hot, wherever we are, and you are sticking to me.
Your hands are quite full. Mine grasped in one, a lump of clay in the other.
The clay is warming up in your palm, and so am I. The clay is almost ready to be moulded, and so am I.
Make me into a vase, a bowl, your best girl.
Here we are. On the couch, in this lesson. Lying in your palm, a block of clay, me. Lying prone, legs spread wide.
We are in bed now, I think.
Your hands are travelling down my sides, shaping me into yours.
I think it must be dreadful, the power of creation. I wonder if God cried like you do.
You see me as you have always imagined:
Layed out under you. I am soft, pliable, ready and willing.
I wonder if this is love.
You tell me I’m beautiful, and I think it must be true.