The Surface of It Grace Mendel
I used to be a wall of temperate air pressed against your mouth. We used to laugh and dangle each other over the edge of something finite. I’d make your earth in little stones (a palmful each). They’d fall from my throat, from my mouth and knit together beneath your soles, rumbling. Then you ate a tooth; the screech and grunt as it slipped between your molars, the grating rasp as you locked your jaws to break it. I thought: inside it, once you’d finally cracked it open, would it be pale milky succulence? Chalky follicles of coral? Ash? A pressurized socket? It turned out to be grey and slack: a pinched balloon. I climbed out of a silt tourniquet, only to watch you in some seascape through a shaking lens. I blurred your face until I couldn’t tell your skin from breaking tide. Think of me as surface; an underside, the shaded arc of a rusting bridge, oil on your hand, blue light quivering beneath the aqueduct—just out of reach. I am the water rushing over your brittle brim.
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