by Donovan Cleckley
“So it was even now with the carnation. She had her hands on it; she pressed it; but she did not possess it, enjoy it, not altogether."
- Virginia Woolf, “Moments of Being: ‘Slater’s Pins Have No Points,’” A Haunted House (1944)
awakening in silence,
with her body lying beside her,
she moved to the window
if only to glance at the starlight
beyond the house.
to her, a house differs from a home
in that the latter
serves as a place
for the living.
houses await lives
to possesses them
and to makes them homely.
a laugh escaped
from a sealed mouth
detached from life,
locked in a house.
seeing carnations on display,
this young man,
whose body was not truly his,
purchased the striped ones
with white petals tinged in red.
and as the body walked onward,
his mind went with it,
Imprisoned beneath his skin.
in the hallway,
which sprouts other rooms
as if a stem with its leaves, he watches a figure stand
on the other side
of a sewing machine,
feeling the thread
on disembodied fingers.
his seam
seems to unravel,
him being simply thread,
bare to the hands touching him.
a patchwork of cloth,
selected by hands foreign to her,
bound her
in unknown texture.
born by a machine
just the other day,
if only boy and girl
held bodies that mattered,
then they could stay
even while so tattered
with the other toys
until forgotten
for lack of joy.