Sewer Breath
Close your eyes or
put up side blinders.
A paper bag over your head.
Brown.
Crinkling.
Chafing your neck.
In another room
you can hear running water.
The air is just a shade
too chilly,
but your feet are
warm in fluffy slippers.
Your stomach is full.
Your heart is still.
There is no aching.
You are lucky.
Your mind sends signals
back and forth
to your fingers.
They are cold,
but in control.
Set your focus
on the gentle
tic tic tic tic
of the zipper.
Teeth clicking together.
You close your sweatshirt
clear up to your chin.
Somewhere along the path
of early adolescence
you started to think
about the way you think.
Metacognition makes us human.
Allows us to compare
the sticky feeling of blood
where limbs bend
and stick together
to the way a wayward love
seems to stick around.
To see ourselves as tiny.
On a skewed axis
riding around the sun.
A metallic taste in our mouths,
to the way things exist
so far away.
If you’re smart enough,
you realize how little you know.
How limited humans are.
Just the dust mites
on the eyelashes
of some larger beast.
Simple electric impulses
reliant on oxygen.
We cannot control all things,
just some.
Bug bites will make us scratch.
We can slather stuff on
and try to forget.
Blemishes take time to clear.
Healing takes energy.
We waste time scratching our skin.
Damaging neurons.
Light pressure can sooth us.
Slow gliding of smooth fingers
on the inner arm.
Hand massages.
Fingers gently tugging on hair.
The delicate stroke
of one finger
over the sole of your foot.
Sustained touch releases oxytocin.
We pull each other close.
A chemical for holding on.
As babies we can’t thrive
without another’s skin touching ours.
Adults can survive alone,
but are built to interact.
To react.
To sustain each other
with our brains and bodies.
To mingle our ideas.
Our skin cells slough off
when we shake hands.
We wear one another.
Our most treasured acts
require coating ourselves
in the products of other bodies.
We are born bloody.
We feed at the breast.
Our tongues touch tongues
and torsos
and soft folds.
Sweat coats our backs
as a quiver of muscles
deposit the liquid of life
into the warm and damp
swamps
of a woman.
We are rain forests.
So dense that
light is needed to
find the way.
Unknown creatures
in brilliant colors
swing through the canopies
of our hair.
There are fierce things full of poison.
Curious primates.
Large birds
with songs that sound
strangely like human laughter.
Even from far away,
we have a sense of which direction
the sound originates.
A humidity that will soak your skin.
A deep and damp odor.
We each smell things in a different way.
Molecules float
into our nostrils.
Codes to break.
For a moment you can smell roses.
Spearmint candy.
Sharp onions in the kitchen
making your eyes water.
Pheromones of a certain shape
will light your brain on fire.
The scent of
your lover’s hair
and sweat
that exists
just behind their ear.
The food we taste.
Memories.
Like the way the smell of
cedar and berber carpet
remind me of those things
that happened.
I can hear in my ears
the sound of shuffling cards.
Sound in the absence of
sound waves.
The way nausea is felt
in the stomach
and the head.
Vertigo make us vomit.
Our balance boils down
to calcium crystals
clinging to tiny hairs.
Try walking after a
playground spinner stops.
Walk off of a boat
and onto shore.
You will still feel movement.
We are input and output.
We are reasoning.
We miscalculate.
There is that line
between a craving
and eating too much.
Eat a giant chocolate bar
until your throat burns
and your stomach feels
filled with
a thick liquid.
A line between sated
and gluttony.
The seven deadly sins
are all feasts of the senses.
Get used to it.
Passion fades over time
and love becomes
comfort and camaraderie.
The warmth in your chest
after a cup of hot tea.
Muscle relaxation.
Zero in on the way
light passes through
the white blooms
on the Christmas cactus
in the window.
Through the golden leaves
outside.
I am glad I am shielded
from the cold wind.
Grateful for the warmth
of the dog on my lap.
Even if I can smell
her sewer breath.