Semifluid

I think I might be underwater.

A crowd screeches overhead, counting back from three,

giggling at my solitary jump with grins 

sewn to their cheeks like yarn.

The pool momentarily condenses, the liquid splintering into wood.

And I keep picturing middle school dance floors 

Awkward limbs stick to sneakers and are pasted, posed in corners.

The chemicals in stasis and not one child dares to move.

I keep thinking of this substance, this thing between liquid and solid

and how we waver between the two but feign definition.

Cell phones light the pathway to my house,

while lightning bugs drown alongside me in the pool.

Rules are rules are rules they say.

So dress nice, smile pretty, scrub your mouth out with coarse soap.

There are so many better words you could say.

I keep wishing I knew how else to speak to the sleeping.

But fuck it, fuck you, fuck your insistence that language is the enemy.

A splash of cold water across your proper face.

Step on me, scathe my skin, 

contort your body into pictures of rooms of people 

who you’ve talked to for years but you’ve never even met.

Yeah, let’s talk about the weather and my course load and the boy across the hall.

Let’s stitch together unicolor faces and yank at all the knots.

Filing cabinets filled with shit, empires filled with cruelty.

But the fit of it all is pleasant, everything is cute and nothing offensive.

So if it sounds like nice and looks like nice, then when is it allowed to just be fucking nice.

I’m glad that I jumped. I’m glad I danced. And I’m glad my mouth was made out of filth.

The water and the wood and my skin,

and pinocchio crying from the shelves of my mind,

begging me to reclaim my flesh, to choose reality.

Bodies around me all sculpted into shapes, rigid and exact,

and the poor dreamer has no idea what he’s saying. 

Count it with me, count it down,

the calories the test scores the boys that I have slept with-

the number of words I can’t say in public,

the venom of words that I say instead.

The measurements that then become the distance.

They push me in the pool and they laugh 

and we all forget, all at once,

that we are already

bodies of water.