I do not want my body back

Just put it out with the recycling on a Thursday.

As if I’d waste a chance at time travel on something

so squishy and unstable, and for what?

To stare at it in its display case,

admire its calloused armor for a few minutes

before drifting away to find some tapestries or furniture to look at?

To teach it how to salsa again (this time no Marlon and no Cuba and

no hands wrapped around my hips, no hums of reverence at their fullness — the hands and the hips)?

To teach it to scramble up a rock face,

to come,

to ride a bike,

to brake on rollerblades,

by which I mean throwing itself onto the grass

of a stranger’s lawn at the bottom of a hill

before it eats shit on the pavement — I don’t think

I’ll get a second chance at a move that good.

Just keep it. I’m not doing it again:

the growing pains,

the dawning revulsion,

cramps and pool parties and looking up

things to hate about it in YM every week,

thickening coils of awareness. 

If I’m going back, I’m going

back to that June in the park,

when we stopped at the weird

grocery next to the mouth of the 6 train

to buy carrot sticks and hummus and

strawberries grossly overpriced for their

beheadings,

to that spot on the hill where the cars on 5th

were just a murmur of a stream nearby.

You take the scarf off my neck and we stretch

out our legs, our feast, our breaths,

and there’s nothing we need that we don’t have.

Today's the last day for early bird prices on my January Write Start community. Sign up today for 30 days of prompts, mindset shifts, live sessions for connecting with other writers, and a 40-minute call with me, all designed to help you write more in 2024. $59 until midnight. I hope we get to write together in January!