Pink Moon
Jesse Rice-Evans
Youth is a thing crammed between other things . I think I am towards the end of it .
Researchers are looking into feelings . They can have mine , the sharp and stony , creamy centers scalloped with blade .
If beauty is a wound , I was born scarred over , pink and hungry , trickling pale under your fingers .
I go in pink , come out blistered . You are a fire no one can stop , inflammable , I admit it , some days I am all burned out .
If I burned like I once burned , I would leave you smoldering . Instead I clutch heat like a gem , fill coat pockets with crystals holding heat , rose quartz and tourmaline , alien .
In linen , you are floral , lush palm in streak of desert , welcoming my pocked face to rest , a clean flat sunlit , not enough coffee in the house , letting me sleep anyway .
In the beginning , I was inconsolable , convinced of inevitable grief , moonset too early , knowing those jeans won ’ t fit anymore .
Not good at being decorative , I am resigned to subjecthood . Sometimes I just want to be used , without agency , a thing . What kind of feminist does that make me ?
Use me .
In the future , bodies will be things we try on like shoes , consciousnesses scurrying among blood and skin . My future-body is never hungry except for the specific hunger for work and late nights in your bed , finally big enough for me .
I remember the day I felt woman ( belted wool coat , air bright with altitude ).
50 Cauldron Anthology