[Untitled]
by Eleanor Mary Boudreau

I clip my toenails and lose my will to live a little bit
It is bound up in those wishes, like the wish that I was thinner,
in those thoughts like, “I wish that I was thinner.”
I wish I wasn’t here at all
the rocks are very pretty, though, seen from above
small and purplish, and arranged abstractly
atop the garden wall, but I wonder—
are they stuck there?
I say that I exist, without my body and without the romantic poets. I exist.
From the parapet, a slow drip
misses the garden.
My thin forearms on the table, palms facing upwards,
the thin blue rivers look completely still as if frozen, in thought.
The writing says, “These are my unafraid veins,” and then, “you are friends with,”
but the writing is wrong. I am in love.
I trace the ovals of my eyelids with my fingertips,
stopping and pressing harder each time I reach their slow tops. It is one thing
to want to crawl out of your skin,
it is quite another to think you could.
The pop of a tennis ball back and forth,
I am such a miserable creature. No sadness
and no pretended sadness. There will be no sadness here.
——
I rest my heavy jaw on the floorboards and contemplate
the blue of the moon which is not blue at all. I am more likely to call it what it is—
a finger nail in air. If we are talking about fundamental layers,
the floor has some that I would like to strip, completely,
but then I wouldn’t recognize it.
The key fits neatly in the lock.
I know all about loss.
——
Choose it and it grows fat, like a chicken on a spit—
and what about the ones you don’t chose?
the special parts inside you stretched like rubber bands, thin and painful,
a musical instrument. Well at least you feel them and not this slackness,
this heavy, breathing looseness that they become—
words are cheap, words are so cheap, like the words for, “this tastes delicious”
and it is a feeling and a feeling ONLY
still, I really enjoy the hunger. Today I feel fantastic
I haven’t done a very good job of loving myself (or anyone else for that matter)
but the pretzel bag is not bothering anyone, sitting on top of the wastepaper-basket
stiff, silent, plastic, and decently clean
—maintaining its integrity—
what it means to stay alive in spirit, you can feel already
tickling your hip, the resiliency of the human spirit