My cramps are my needle pricks
needed as much as I need you,
as much as I need you to feel that need
and as much as the rush I get
slapping myself
hard
for feeling that need,
because it is my body that feels
not my brain
-however much hormonal secretion
is the source of it-
It is my body which feels like my heart has been
pulled out forcibly and banged against the wall
with the wiring still plugged through my rib-cage
so its reverberations are felt,
and heard,
playing a requiem.
It is my body which feels not only the force
or detachment
but the utter shock of it
as if someone had told me that the plants I watered
for years had been plastic.
Lies and silences are just different
seasons for the same garden,
But this isn’t the Bard’s garden of love;
this isn’t a midsummer night’s magic trick either.
This is my body being reactionary to the force
slipping words out of sick hands
which promise you nothing,
puking particles from my stomach
which feels inexorably similar
during cramps of menstruation
and in the throes of orgasm.
