What Is It Like to Live in a Body?

a poem by Trenton Pollard

---

Today I could sublimate
like a Finnish foggy morning,
sea-ice shedding into dawn—
like how when I was a boy
I wanted to wake up
as a woman.

Everything fades
at the horizon yet I’m drawn
to unrealistic color
in landscapes, gaudy yellow
dapples on pines,
lakesides crusted with turquoise.

I want a lover
to find a brush and lay
me down in canvas—
what shapes we make.
I want to be buoyed
inside a song

of candles
dancing to their own notation.
Candles flickering
in remembrance of grief
I don’t want
pinned or charted,

but left to linger
in my body
with the ones
who struck
the match.
Morning and evening

I could read about sunlight
blowing through curtains.
It is the perfect way
to enter a room or novel:
to be inside and see the sudden change,
the first ripple.

My favorite shadows
are those with unknown origins;
the gray dance
upon the tablecloth—
was it from the vine, cloud, or bird?
My body tells me, “Bird.”