CL YOUNG
HOW TO BE A BODY |
we have started to worry about our health
we are flossing regularly and going to the doctor my parents did a good job they taught me how to brush my teeth they taught me to run and let me live past the times I wouldn’t go to sleep it has been work to learn to be a person on my own why can’t doctors be weirder watch them sew skin together one too many times without taking something with them like the years I didn't eat to show my limbs their best petit allegro could float out on clouds alone when the nothing in me got too big I wished for fish scales to fit together like scissoring like a pair of shoes at the bottom of a suitcase that maybe if I turned two cold trout opposite each other I'd feel taken care of again I am still inventing new ways not to think about dying yesterday I saw the largest picture ever taken it was a slice of the Andromeda Galaxy that requires 4GB of storage and I am meant to feel small while my mother worries I will always be sad my sisters worry about money and my father worries about snow my niece reads a book in the corner without thinking she is the same age as this century The Internet has always existed when I ask her about the future she says she’s ready to live in a generation that’s rejecting the ways we have given it how a throat can be a great swan sifting through poison like cheesecloth they didn’t tell us how many tiny holes in our lungs holding gray organs in elementary school until a liver was almost a heart and the shimmer of shoe box valentines turned corner floaters in my eyes it took a long time for them to figure out I was smart for me to be able to touch a finger to my iris now when I go to bed I leave my night sweat heart on a shelf next to some plants dreams float from my flushing cheeks crowd around it and hold their palms flat like there is a campfire to stare into and never go blind what do we mean warming our hands like we could conjure a life from burning mornings I sit in front of a UV light try to fill my chest with the sun how nice it would be to breathe without effort to eat apples to the smallest core and keep going I swallow easily my soft face hiding microscopic cuts in the throat fingernail clippings on the edge of the bathtub I sink the soles of my feet into the ground imagine magnets on either side of my skin blood runs everywhere and vibration from the marrow a tuning fork struck repeatedly on the kneecap there is a difference between trembling and shaking I want death by electric shock to see once without looking |
CL YOUNG was born and lives currently in Colorado. She is from Boise, Idaho.
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