Obsession

after Marianne Chan

I feel // my body heavy. // This is how I worry: / my body, my body

I try to think of the flourish of wildflowers. I

know that surely satin trillium petals don’t feel

foreign blooming atop whorls of leaves. But my

seedlings, penetrating surface soil of skin and body,

feel wrong. So, I trowel flesh, leaving patchwork and muscles heavy.

I think of serpents slithering away. Of this

gift they were given. How nice it surely is

to shuck off dry, withered husks of self. How

nice it is to escape sequences of decayed scales. I

envy that first moment they curve back to see; the worry

of growth gone astray left lifeless in a brittle pile. My 

mind obsessed, returns to rising shoots and shedding snakes: a body

meant to regrow and retry. I try pulling weeds and slipping from my

skin, every time left with red splotch and naked patch: ravaged body.

By Eileen Ellis