My body is not sexy right now–

It is hunching greedily above a raspberry patch 

and using its messy fingers to feed itself 

without the usual performed elegance.

It is seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, 

cleansing and decorating itself, 

loving and loathing every earthly and celestial particle.

It is inventing and remembering emotional history,

discarding like a spade and cultivating like a magpie. 

It is discovering its new arrangement, 

Substituting poppies for thistles and eucalyptus. 

These are new memories, new shapes, new cells. 

It is kicking dirt over its waste, 

crying away bad love, 

rejecting vulgar hands, 

welcoming artful fingers.

It’s leaving itself to hunt for treasures

and returning to itself with the goods. 

Its fingers are learning skill after skill, 

Weaving story and costume and spell,

Penning and striking and stitching, 

Moving the needle in and through, 

becoming wiser and more dangerous, 

Each day crawling further from its shell

And into soil to be devoured.

And the mind can’t know any of this 

Or hear the song the body sings. 

It can only bow and weep and wonder

as it watches the body, wild and heavy with blood, 

Leap with untethered elation into each black hour.