Four Fingers

I held four summers in my hands.
Barely enough skin for a body.

The corridor smelled of fried aubergines,
voices folding into one another.

Suitcases arriving for the holidays.
Friends dulled by long lunches.
Strangers passing like grit behind the eyes.

I missed a call,
and the door shutting in the blood.
My head: an unripe fruit,
splitting without sound.

Then impact—
A hand bigger than my time.
A blow,
and something knotted loosening inside me
like a thread with no end.

Unmoored brain.

An organ so contorted, full of folds and grooves, suddenly dissolves
into a long, disconnected gut
in the hands of summer’s heavy sleep.

The walls breathed.
Expanded. Receded.
Too large for the eyes watching them.
Even the suitcases turned away.

An arm became rope, tied where I couldn’t see.
I became a small raft dragged to shore
across a floor that refused to help.
Legs stuck fast,
like wet leaves to stone.
A vermilion trace left behind.

A vortex in the house.
A black hole hidden in a room.
A child the size of four fingers
still resisting spaghettification.

I hate fried aubergines,
summer cut into cubes,
the suitcases of strangers,
fathers,
mothers,
and priests.

Four fingers suspended in the air, no longer mine, 
I see four steady flames,
no one would ever dare put them out.

So, I remember my own—
fingers gone dark.
I see them
quivering among the tears as if they were lit.

Perhaps four thin threads of light
would have been enough
for a night this vast.

I have 35 dead flames in my hands,
still stark.

Thank you for reading.

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