I Come Apart I become Apart I come

by Ellen Stultiens

Open. Open like a flower.

Watch the petals fall at my feet.

You’re everything I’ve ever known.

I’m I. You’re I. There’s something

tearing up inside.

Ripping its way through, there’s a

seam up the body.

I run my finger along the narrow

bone. I’m coming apart at the

delicate seams. I’m tectonic plates

breaking away from each other I

never had any seams.

Just hands and hands acting as

clasps holding worn-down skin together.

Look me in the eyes and tell me

you love me. Take my head in your

hands. Grief becomes me.

And let it fall away.

It’s going to dissolve in water.

What better answer can I give?

Than what I am before you.

What I am is this.

I am

the only person on the bus. I am the

voyeur watching dark break into

light and rain stream in tree roots

across the windows while my Dad

hangs onto my neck. And for just a

moment

I am tears.

In anger, he rages inside of me. A

hush of flapping wings with fire tips

that singe the sides of the stomach,

erupting out of layers of memorial

repetitions, wounded by a stranger.

Your voice was so loud, I can’t hear

my dreams. Silence gapes, my

days open wide, a spreading hole

of burning paper inside my head,

where you took up so much space

of sound.

Imagine, you, in relation to me.

Reach inside of me.

Sometimes the only difference, the

snapping twig, between parent and

child is the choice to swaddle

what’s inside in soft blankets and

stroke till it rests again.

I wouldn’t know to do that if you

hadn’t shown me

how much it hurts.

Crucify yourself - everyone in your

vicinity, fistfuls of grass ripped from

the earth in tantrum. But still my

darling you’re soft to me. You’re a

white rabbit in my lap and I’m

stroking your ears with the palm of

my hand.

So come, soft to me now. Broken

down, we’re soft in the end.

There’s nothing left.

There’s no walls left.

Animals in flight don’t face fences in

the sky. And the worms in the ground

twist their bodies round

every rock.

It is only we.

Only we that sing of rules.

Until we are in the skies, the grounds.