Sarah Caulfield
Break My Bones
I want to be able to say the word dyke without choking around it;
Without falling backwards into a smaller version of myself,
A decade old, who only knew the word crunched like an apple core,
Like something gone rotten. That it was something to do with what women
Did with their mouths, and that was what made them
Something unclean.
The second time I let a boy kiss me, I remember waiting to feel something
Other than fear. Nothing more than a cellophane girl: put your eye right to me,
And I disappear. It’s magic!
Later, I cleaned him out of me, the slug of toothpaste winking up at me
From the sink, glistening until the taste was gone.
I long to arrive at a point beyond shame, but the road uphill is made unstable:
I am tearing out my own spine and calling it a Jacob’s ladder, licking over the scars of
Old wounds so often they seem to open. They make themselves known with the sting,
Soft newly-wombed mouths under my tongue, given life, growing,
Crying of holy palmer’s kiss, and Communion wine, and the waiting reckonings
I have yet to make, the makers I have yet to meet, the growing sense I will have to answer
To my elders. Forgive me, I will say. Forgive me. I am still plucking out the stitches.
Sarah Caulfield is the author of Spine (Headmistress Press, 2017). Her work has appeared in Lavender Review, Voicemail Poems, The Griffin, and The Mays (XXIV). She has lived in the UK, Poland and Germany, and currently lives in Japan.
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