Plums

I have felt my skin slide off my bones like butter across toast and pool at my toes;
felt the sand trickling into my ears, confusing like it's the sound of rain,
because I thought quicksand was a myth.
Thank God for walls at malls
whom are probably tired of catching my falls and listening to the shaky syringe-draws of a breath,
I've felt this entire body of mine slip through the holes of the speakers and turn into radio static,
subatomic and shaking.
You touch the body but the numbness tells you if you can't feel it it's not yours;
there is permanent tinnitus in my ears from a bomb blast where i was the only casualty,
my only daydream is where i am present in my own body
and in the dream i go to the grocery store only to hold plums
not to buy them or anything else
but simply to hold them,
feel the soft parts of them, and the parts of them that the world made hard.
I too, can tell you what it's like to be a stone soul inside of river flesh,
to be a sword wrapped in purple bruises.
I can tell you what it's like to be screaming but nothing comes out
and they stand across from you and claim they cannot read lips or eyes
or the limp way they pulled at my body
like taffy stretching me this way and that
to fit themselves inside;
my voice a paper boat sailing on a sea of eggshells,
they stepped inside,
made a bed on my tongue,
washed their bathrobe in the pocket of my cheeks,
left their muddy shoes in my throat,
made coffee in my lungs and left the filters to mold;
I go to the grocery store in my mind for the sole purpose of holding plums,
not to buy them or anything else,
just to feel them in my hands
and know that I am real.

-anna sluder 

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