by Addie Tsai
I slept to a monotonous record, a seasonless circle
looping my body into a string of invisible coils.
I counted time, measured the sun
as it wore my face into poses.
The slit of my eyes sliced the light in half.
The fan whirred a layer of ash over our taut, fragmented bodies.
When I grew afraid of you, your fingercurl
grazing the bones beneath my cheek,
I cast my lying body out on a line,
drew it further and further away.
Look, there it is,
bobbing above the waters of a black hole.
When you grew afraid of me, I taunted you,
the half-circle of my back carving out a refusal.
I hated this game of inhabited space,
convinced I was innocent of involvement
until at last I caught myself in the mirror,
body unafraid, casting an empty reflection.
Next to me, a car rotated in a circle of water.
I stacked one tight vertebra over another,
railroad ties for sale
in an abandoned junkyard.
*Photo courtesy Jenny Spadafora.