Studying Myself

My grey matter twists, reforms.

New neural connections, synapses firing an absurdist dreamscape.

My hands are a poem, pink and bruised.

Making, pleasuring, comforting, reading.

Muscle memorials of past letters, emails, essays, stories.

Reaching for light: my laptop’s pulsing pixels.

A white text document blinds me.

Isolated from the outside, I boil a kettle of water to steep a pot of earl grey.

I coat pink gloss on my drying, chapped lips.

Recovering outdated femininity™️, now a recognized computer virus:

created to hack half the population, and leave them hurting.

A red squirrel runs across the electrical line,

it’s mouth stuffed with apple blossoms.

I think about dying my hair turquoise, but am too shy to be stared at.

I continue writing what I see, collecting vibrant words

in notebooks, organized by topic:

Observations of rabbits running on pavement,

Smells of flowering trees,

An overview of Toronto’s steam buns.

I relearn being a good student, with a corresponding nocturnal habit

and I stay up until the birds chirp good morning, and pale blue sunrise

highlights the tree line and neighboring roofs.

After a week of rain, my lover and I walk to the water’s edge.

We point out flaming tulips, purple tree blossoms.

A dark caterpillar, smaller than a thumbtack.

Four yellow baby geese climb up the waters bank,

Pulling grass and spiky fronds with their bills.