Despy Boutris
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THESE TREES KNOW FIRE THE WAY MY BODY KNOWS TOUCH


​I have always been
            dry grass.                  Smoke.
The ruins that make up
                                            my grandfather’s home.
This night, the scent

                 of fennel.                 The scars
on my wrists and arms.

                                                                    And what is a girl
but a knife. All wilderness. God,
you can’t expect me to be
                                   
                                good.
I’m half-thicket,
                  half-thorn.
I’m half-made
                                          
                         of water.
Up ahead there’s a barn
                     
                                on fire. No,
it’s covered in autumn leaves. And water floods
from my eyes. No,
                                       
                          it’s rain falling
from the clouds
            staining the sky. The trouble
with water:
                        
                       it lets nothing go
untouched.
           Like hunger.
And what was my crime but to turn to water:
to let nothing go
                                         
                    untouched,
tracing a wrist-bone, a bow
        
         of lips. Fingers tracing the veins
of the leaf I plucked
                                          
                    off a branch.
Thumbing the blade
               of a butter knife. I watch
the grass bow to the breeze
and I submit
                                               to my hungering hands,
to the burning barn within me.

 

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