Claire Taylor
When I Say I’m Fine
what I mean is I will not let you
see me dying
tender
flesh rubbed raw
in places where I’ve tunneled
through darkness for only the damp
earth to collapse in on me
again outside my window
there is a bird rustling in the gutter
but when I shake you awake
it goes quiet you’re asleep in seconds
and I am up all night listening
to the sound of anything that reminds me
I am alive
it is a kind of suicide
this freeing myself
from myself cutting me
out like the dark bruise
of a ripe peach soft flesh
marred by absence I picture you
bringing your tongue
to the hole I’ve created
then lips then teeth you
slowly devouring me
when I say I’m fine
what I mean is I need you
to see me
dying
to be the hand
pressed to my throat
can you hear it
my breath searching
for lungs
One Good Thing
is how fascia unwinds like a loosening vise. Hand to my belly, I know where the tissues want me to go and I follow; I wasn’t born to lead. I once answered a call from a man I thought was my dad’s friend, Brian. What are you wearing, Brian asked and I told him: denim shorts and a t-shirt. A ring of dolphins circling the Earth. SAVE THE PLANET printed on the back. Brian said that made him hard. Brian said now he’s touching himself. Brian said, no, he didn’t need to talk to my dad. I let these memories gather inside me—a thousand beginnings and middles in search of an end, winding like muscle fibers from a too-quickly turned head, a small knot where the neck meets the shoulder. Press it and a hot spark will travel down my spine. Press it and I’ll show you how to breathe through the pain. Didn’t you know I was born electric? A live wire. An old-fashioned fuse box. Someday I’ll be ash and you won’t know where to spread me. Save a bit for the man on the corner who likes to call me baby, a little pinch for the tip of his tongue—let him finally have a taste of me.
A House Near the Other Houses in the Middle of the Block
Next to the house with the bright green door
she told me, the first time I visited.
I pass by there on my runs in the weeks and months
after she is gone
and all the years to follow. I stop in the street and stare
up at the window of the bedroom
where I massaged her aching legs, her tumor-riddled hips
on Tuesday and Thursday mornings as she
slowly disappeared, thinning into bedsheets.
See you Thursday, I said—a day for her that never came.
Someone has painted the green door a different color.
A row of houses all the same and me
in the middle of the street
lost.
Claire Taylor is a writer in Baltimore, Maryland. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications. She is the founding editor of Little Thoughts Press, a quarterly print magazine of writing for and by kids. She also serves as an editor for Capsule Stories. Claire's debut picture book, Benjamin's Sad Day, is forthcoming from Golden Fleece Press. You can find more of Claire's work, including her published collections, at clairemtaylor.com.
