» Poetry

Saying Goodbye to Your Body

Throw it in the forest before it starts to spoil.
Let birds shit it to obscurity.
It won’t be missed. Not by you and not
by the man on the train whose hand
you grabbed by accident. The lights flickered
and you let yourself get carried away by fear.
I don’t know you, the man said, excused
himself away from you. Everyone forgets eventually.
Even the boy whose disappointment you captured
on parchment paper and hung in your bedroom
for years. His body is far gone from your bed
and slowly yours will be too.
Think of it as an extended vacation,
a sweet Valium dream.
You’ll be reborn, a swamp-monster,
slick and diamond-tough.
You’ll tear into an avocado and eat it,
pit and skin and all. And you will have forgotten.
That’s the only way to keep living.