Another Poem about My Body In Which My Body is the Poem

I draw my pale thoughts over my head like a blanket
and wonder if the discomfiture ever gets softer on the heart
see I've learned why the heart beats against the chest wall,
it is a war drum on the front lines of my thoughts
the harbinger before the marching towards the skin and the vessels and the hair.
at first, I wanted my skin to stretch like the tendon of a blue sea
to make room for all of the ache,
but now I want to be small,
to shrink and slip through the eye of an needle
and take less space and air than everyone else in the room
I dream of being the first atom to split;
of being swallowed by a beach pelican,
and spat out like tiny fish bones he couldn't devour;
there are so many unfinished poems in my chest,
I'd like to think my body is an unfinished poem that I am writing,
and that one day maybe not every poem will be about my body,
but they will be about the mountains and rivers I command to rise in the softest parts of me;
I hope you are commanding mountains to rise in you,
and one day when we feel a bit better we can stand atop our summits and wave and scream at each other
like a marooned person with their flare, realizing they've finally been seen,
that they can finally go home.

-anna sluder