by Faye Chevalier
[i]
inimitable callow-ses
and matchless eyes,
would you
take time,
and paint my fingernails
a watercolor-olive-
green with dead grass? and i’ll fill my shallow nooks with weathered soil.
and i’ll build a slight-sense of slighter-still stricture.
and i’ll scour the rough edges, rid myself of friction.
[ii]
i’ll inscribe my spoken name
in curative, indiscretion-al lettering,
ribbon-ing across the nape of my neck.
and i’ll wring these upper-baritones,
and their occasional high e’s,
until they
in-vert—
finding themselves wholly wreathed in
near-orderly
nigh-plastic,
with a finality sounding something like
what Connecticut should’ve sounded like.
and i’ll seal stacks of these
over-ink-ed sheets,
so
Hayek
would be
displeased.
and dislodge my bodily scars
to their rightful spaces—
your right, down an inch or so,
your left, up nine,
your right, up four.
[iii]
see, Noreen needled a snowflake
into my reeling expose-ed skin,
and now i can finally remind myself of impermanence.
[iv]
and i can only assume it makes some kind of difference.