Lucrecia Dalt
Edge
I am gathering up skins
I am gathering up skins and blowing them up like balloons
Breathe-filled and moving about in a docent daze
A fleshless meandering
An organless freedom
A sharply delineated fog
An airy ego
A warm cloud

Skin making form as air pressure from both directions
How long does the body last without organs to fill it?
What does the body want except to pass blood
Through tiny vessels and keep the whole shape intact?

I wanted to fill you up with my exhalations
And drink out all your flesh
But keep your bones and skin still flawless

And blow through the tiny opening in the top of your scalp
Until all there was, was perfect you and perfect me
And breath and shape and pressure

And I would be the breath
And I would press against the back of your eyeballs
The root of your spine
The back of your teeth
The small of your shoulders
The inside of your navel
The slippery side of your throat
Your vocal chords
Your voice box
Your Adam’s apple
Your cheeks
And my breath would fill your lungs until it felt like your breath
And when you spoke you’d have a voice that was not quite you
And not quite me but something rubbed through both of us

“What am I but an edge?” you ask me
“What am I but an edge?” you ask me