ManicWorld Magazine

no, no, thank you very much.
never mind all the singing and the surfing,
all the smiling and slouching and side eyeing.
I’d rather be alone on my little stormy boat
than ever again sink in the
sweetness of your summer sand.

I’m a ship without an anchor,
a piece of uncut driftwood,
I start to sway—
strength falters like shipwreck,
wobbly knees succumb to sea-sickness.

high tides of joints and flesh crash down
expand like sea foam to collar-bone;
disproportionately corporal waves.
too wide for floral bikini straps,
they expand out of the safety of a size 0
fill out like a wrong sided diamond.

running not perpendicular to the earth
in polite right angles or demure little curves.
betray my very feminine instinct
to shrink, to cower, to offend none,
in learning to be invisible.

but, alas.
shoulders
my blessed clavicles,
my broader-than-broadway shoulders,
yet dare embrace the sky above.

suppose I have nothing but to hope
someday these shoulders
sprout a pair of feathery wings
and fly above my sinking ship.

sun to shoulder,
song to sanity,
sailing to skyward salvation,
somewhere higher than even these
shoulders of mine.