For Satori: The Strangeness You Gave Me

 

When I went in search of the root

my blind fingernails scraping through the rot

I found the strangeness you gave me

It was wrapped in newsprint

With a shoestring of butcher's twine

 

I asked if you were hurting

And buried myself in your unwashed hair

            It smelled like stale coffee

 

And so I died in there

            In the coffin of your follicles

The dirt became me like a mask stucked fused

To a carnival-goers face

 

Water stains danced down the walls

The room smelled of minerals, citrus and the bindings of phone books

I fell asleep

in the steel-framed bed where I was conceived

And went inside myself

 

My lungs were spongy birthday cake

            Held together by pink frosting

I wanted to go inside you too but the whale that slammed against

The inside of your ribcage scared me

           

 

So I pulled out of the slumber we breathed together

            One...two…

As the curtain splayed tattered shadows

 

I breached the membrane and the strangeness glopped out like an egg yolk

Tugged at the mandrake

            It was your bumpy body

And it screamed an exit wound in the fabric of things

Poking my head like a groundhog into the fabric of things

 

You were not on the other side

            It’s ok

It’s stranger, I’m a stranger this way