By MEL ARTHUR
2.
Sometime in late,
i fragment at my being, watch my body turn itself up in the shape of a palm that claws at my feelings, marking my gut with heaps of silence that ever so often bursts into sound. i am searching for you. i am wanting to unshed this need, mark my despair into your lips. you are too far. i find
myself
turning into an opening for you
1.
it begins at my center. gathers in drops that tickle the absence my feeling creates around you. i let the words chisel at your skin, palms first so i can only hold you in whispers. you whose flesh i want to sift through, touch the soil underneath, water it soft. maybe we can become mud stretching the earth into a circle with no middle. maybe
I am wanting you to sop up the puddle of me smeared in muck, place the wet in the biting part of your mouth. Let me crawl into you if only to make a home in your chest let me melt in pieces so you can touch me.
1.
I tell you that i refuse to look too long at you and you lest my aching pins you into my chest. which is a lie. I mean i don’t look at you which is to say i need to look at you. Turn your eyes to/from the parts of my body pulsing in your air. Remove your questions so you see how tightly i am stitching myself together. How i bite ever so softly at the thought of knowing you.
3.
maybe I am learning not to hide from you when I rub the palms of my fingers all overmyself,
i hope that takes away how scared i am when i realize i could be undone by you
here and there even in my refusal.
1.
that’s all.
1.
i cant help but gaze doubly at the curves that distinguish your jaw from the night. i look away before our distance tinged wants constrict our knowing, reduce our present into weepy sighs glossed over with what it means to press into your skin
3.
if i listen closely, i see you remove a layer of yourself, simultaneously revealing and refusing to stretch to make a home for me. you tell me nothing as i thumb red dots into your skin, kiss every indent created so when you inhale, you drag into you bits of my absence
3.
Often, I remember the way you still my trembling. How the pages i etch into my skin are filled with feeling i want to hurl down your throat. i am sorry i cant remember. i am sorry i stand next to you with nothing but reverberation in my chest. My heart pulses at the beat of nothing. i am sorry i cant let you bring me joy. i am sorry you are who i cant follow.
1.
oh my selfish body
can we are we can we can we incomplete ourselves in the form of distance
are we can we are we ruin with no inflection
am i can we am i i i i
Writer | Mel Arthur ’25 | marthur25@amherst.edu
Editor | Beatrice Agbi ’26 | bagbi26@amherst.edu
Artist | Isabella Fuster-Crichfield ’26 | ifustercrichfield26@amherst.edu