In Which I Employ Anatomy to Enact Myself

by Abby Millager

My body—is a blanket. Lofty. Shapeable. My body
yields its identity with sleep. At night I become hereafter,
changing tunes to the power of drums. At jungle clearing, nine
beasts reign, I don’t know which. Their might is tantamount.
But my body in its absolute state ignores all obstacles.
Runs cold, like a fountain jet straight into danger. I feel

my body outside of myself. It tells me how the day is. How
the rain, how the steepness, how breathing grows thinner.
To take full care of a body we must, every so often,
pitch it in mist. Each hair gathers its own globule of dew
which forms a skin the way a pudding does. My body rests,
secure in its mountain of living—it is the landscape I cling to.

Midmorning but still my limbs, my back resist doing. To become
its own season, that is what my body desires. Across
the vagrancy of time, in the hatches between now
and tomorrow, my fool body braves the airlock, undaunted
by suction or dwindling pressures. Space lacks warmth. Touch
stones angle far between. My body floats, stretches, one moon

to the next, trying on in turn, all the specters of light.
My body feels nothing on its own. It is a moveable clay,
a mesmerized gel. Any one moment may jiggle like
an elbow nudge. No cause for alarm, these perturbations
lend stability the way wind blows reeds strong. My body errs

on the side of inertia. Planets do, too. On the off-chance
of a splash down, my body keeps skin handy. For though
the worldly may know a thing or two, I rely
on extremity and perspective to keep to myself. In the end
we are what we came for. And our bodies tell us what to be.