Edge - Lucrecia Dalt

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