(after “Sand”, written by Jordan Johnson, Taylor Cameron Upsahl, Michael Ross Pollack, Dove Olivia Cameron, and Stefan Johnson)

I’m like one big puzzle;
what’s up with all these lines and curves?
Fragments of myself always

held together.

It’s not that people have
too many of my pieces. 
More, it’s the way my pieces would fit inside people’s

hands if they would wrap around them.

It’s the way I don’t feel the callouses that would trace and yet for once
can still feel my own outline—
I am made up of all the pieces with which I want

people to play. I want to be

picked up, inspected, held a little nearer
to the light.
Hell, I would even risk getting broken, but, instead, what am I?

Porcelain,

fine china—hollow
and beautiful.
Maybe a little too

obviously patterned and shiny for my own good.

first published in Corporeal