Cousins
Something Has Occurred
We are walking to the Isle of Avalon. You are beside me, eight years old, and covered in chocolate ice cream. We hold hands and the grass is cool against our bare feet.
I am the place in which something has occurred
Arthur gives us glasses of water. A firm pat on the head He sends us home. We are walking to the Isle of Avalon and you are thirteen, a few steps ahead of me. I watch your back and wish my body was not hard but curved like yours. The knights doze around Arthur, curled tight like a fiddlehead. I am alone the next time I walk. Eighteen, with newly shorn hair, I want to wield Ex Caliber take it to family Christmas parties where you will be jealous. The sword is heavy and Arthur sleeps. I trudge back to school. We are twenty-one and happen upon Avalon by chance. We drink wine out of jeweled goblets and laugh. We are women sharing the weight of Ex Caliber between us. Celia Cummiskey
I am a body Of strings and clumps of cells Piloted by a mind Seeking direction I am the cheeks, once stained pink at your touch And the eyes Pierced with a soul that you called beautiful. I am the hair that you compared to honey and the hands small against yours and the forearms that you tested between your fingers to determine whether I was more than imagined. But I am not your favorite character To be loved, a fascination then placed back on the shelf until the next adventure I am the hero of a story that you didn’t carve and this body has lived Even when you have misplaced it Because these cheeks turn pink when I laugh At a joke you didn’t make And these eyes shine like the ocean before the rain but not the one you showed me; it’s my own And this hair has been twisted and chopped and torn far longer than you have admired it And these hands are meant to twirl pencils and someday hold a hand that isn’t yours And these lips are untested and untraced parted with words that you haven’t heard
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