Scene XXXII

I have all the time in the world tonight to anticipate my dreams of guilt. I’m sorry to say you’ve
gone months without touching my clavicle, or me. The sign above the jar in the museum might
read, please do touch. Might read, please leave your fingerprints here, over again and over
again like the familiarity of stomach pains. I ate myself to death so many nights. Many, many
nights touched my finger to my throat just to see that my throat was there, to ensure it operated.
My body was this fractured, birded thing – an image – like a photograph of a fallen bell. Once
you were inside of me and I fell to your arms, wayside, no longer merry. I could only bear love
when it was breathing heavily. When I could hear it trampling through the dark.

Loisa Fenichell’s work has been featured or is forthcoming in Guernica Magazine, Poetry Northwest, Tupelo Quarterly, Palette Poetry, and elsewhere. Her debut collection, “all these urban fields,” was published by nothing to say press. She will be an MFA candidate at Columbia University come Fall of 2021.