Nails my hands (to you)

by Jodie Prior

I

When I woke up this morning,

I wanted to go hunting.

I wanted to nail my hands

to the blue-birds.

Open my chest for him to climb into,

a clean incision,

so he can sew it back up once inside.

He could sleep there, stay there.

I want my ribs to be an enclosure for all his visions

of this life,

and after it

and what he wants from it all (from me),

I’ll keep him safe there.

I’ve never felt hunger until today.

My mouth is in a strange terrain.

I do not know what to do with this thirst—

Or this cramp in my jaw

that feels like a mouth full of sparrow song,

warm milk,

mango flesh or his velvet fingers

on my tongue.

Until today, I've been on my way for so long,

from womb to first words

there have been scabs

on my feet gagging up flies

from walking

to places my flesh did not fit

but right now

I’m clean,

no wounds hurt,

it is as simple as that–

nothing hurts.

II

I’m resting on his chest,

my ear pressed so close to his heart.

I can almost see it—

floating,

a bloody yolk in the atmosphere, above our knotted bodies.

I find myself reading his veins (like a palm)—

like I’m some stray cat prowling

the borders of his body,

finding ways to make banquets

out of scraps,

in the sentences he lends to me.

I’m finding myself

thinking about his heart,

one day it will stop.

But how beautiful?

To hear it,

to be the only reliable eyewitness

to the tiny winged birds in his chest,

beating to be with me

now.

I swear,

with my snake bitten tongue,

in a line up,

I’d recognise (sleep to) only his orchestrating organs.

The hunger for anything fleshy is walking

out the room,

and for the first time I feel

a devastating urge for nothing

else to ever touch me

in this life.

III

I have the first time we looked at each other tucked

in the skin of my oranges.

I sometimes peel them open,

watch his eyes, shed greyish light into mine—

watch it all happen again,

I talk to it, sweet and scared,

only then, am I a girl

again, with a toothy bucked smile,

asking my father

to prefer me.

I know he may leave me.

Then I will write

invisible letters.

I will have nothing

to say.

I will miss him quietly,

desperately.

I may send him dead flowers,

and write

about how I’ve been thinking

of all the children crying

in houses I’ll never visit—

I’ll explain how sun-bleached flies keep visiting me,

and that I’ve convinced myself

it’s because he took, then butchered

that lamb growing inside me.

He may still have it, keeping it alive and fed—

touching her when he has nothing else to do.

So I will never ask for it back

he can keep it

Because for him,

I would have beaten my heart flat

if it was too lumpy

for him

to sleep on.

IV

I’ve learned

how close my hands together,

in a blind beg for something greater than fabricated hope

to eat me whole,

cut rivers in my checks, and pack them dry before I

pick my own body up

by the scruff of the neck

after heedlessly praying

to become tragically unbound to muttish men,

who pig out on my womanly desires—

So

when his body is not mine to bite

I’ll ask questions,

cry curses upon faith,

give up on digging to find goodness in this earth

because why did I get nothing

but some weird lusted disgust for my own home.

And then be expected to say

Oh yes, thank you Sir. Take my body! Oh and don’t bother returning her to me in the same condition

you found it in,

thank you,

thank you again.

No,

thank you.

V

My heart will be so sore,

from shedding novels in proven theory

about how

God is dead!

Love isn’t missing—

it’s being skinned and paraded

and I’m trying

to bleed politely

but my body was carved out of a bullet casing

and I can’t find an exit wound.

But,

maybe in June—

I’ll hear a tiny winged bird,

and think

about the contents of his chest again

and think

how can that be?

How could there possibly be no God?

When I see him

between my palms.

A face I can hold

like it was put here just for me.

But I’m guilty for

touching

with wax fingers—

And his skin,

has become the Sun

and I’m falling away from him,

bruising the air,

in my descent,

into the labyrinth.

So find me

another day,

another life.

And remember to consume me

within three to five working days—

Because I swear to all the

sinners who can’t repent their fate

I’ll spoil

right in front of you.

VI

Everything in my mouth tastes like a plea

to let him be different

because

I am petrified

because

I am looking at him now

and I can’t help

but to ask

what to do

when I arrive.

Shall I leave

my boots at the door?

Leave my heart

next to them there?

Wipe the mud off my soul

from day (from the life I had before him)?

Let him hold me

until I’m clean?

But,

right now

I’m on his chest.

I need no proof

of the existence of God

because

he is here,

between my palms, and

I can feel

new religion

happening inside

of me.

VII

He is now a place

I will visit when I’m eighty one.

I will still hear the winged birds.

I will wonder if he can still trace the folds of my body by memory.

But I will always see the blue-birds

and want to nail my hands to them.

Fly me back to him.

I will pray.