From here the mountain looks like moss,

but there are worse things that could look like moss.

 

Bodies, for one. The first time passing most things,

I did not know they could be looked at. God,

 

I was so proud. I thought I was pure movement. 

Like I could prove the world’s ugliness by grafting it 

 

into me. My retort to vapid gardens was rolling in dirt. 

I refused sunscreen. Do you think we are outside?

 

Instead of this painting I see air, tugging itself apart

with beauty. I used to say things like this, 

 

my body petrified with all the wind I swallowed

and kept. When asked what I was, I refused want,

 

and it got me closer to everywhere. I don’t know 

what changed between this and the other way

 

of unmaking. I just sat at the beginning of the ocean 

until the air around me was no longer a meeting point. 

 

I saw old friends at the beach and bit new color 

into my arm. My life, ripe and fat with color, 

 

was not gifted so much as thrown at them. Another retort. 

See this peace, staked so carefully in the body 

 

that there was no first time it entered? I don’t tell you 

to nudge myself back into the world. Here, I won’t look 

 

for anything, but there will be a solid field of red 

or a wound full of poppies. Habit says to fold my legs 

 

before it and wait for a pulse, but I am no statement 

anymore. While we spoke, the landscape balled up 

 

with too much staring. By now, I could peel away 

this painting and not the wall. You hold me 

 

not from wanting, maybe something else? 

This time tomorrow, we will barely need to look.