harm is
- harm is
too many types of hunger to call any one one thing, then another leaning into a frayed portfolio, a seasonal drifting wave over wave over wave the wood skins my skin like i can’t make out concrete
bubbles laid wrong, layers blue is the color any way i look, i refresh my inbox like any day now i’ll win the lottery, like the sweepstakes might call up, asking are you free tonight? to which i’ll politely decline because these decisions take time, and free, can it be qualified like
what i have to offer will never be enough, that every day, every year, i offer only the same self, that, also, that self changes—both delusional
knowing that it will be messy, trying to keep things clean, that is
the denial of loneliness to misremember the song: emptiness is [ ] cleanliness and cleanliness is godliness and god is empty, just like me
just like me to walk out the door, ripping out my hair like freed follicles might be made gills, might allow me to breathe again for once i i once, i often lose my way, so afraid of showing up wrong that i don’t
maintain the absence, a negative in a shoebox, undeveloped—and if i believed in sin that would be the original, even a copy of
an empty god pumps you up, sin or no sin, harm is done and harm is what we’re counting
, as it is:
i believe in a stringof ones and zerosas much as youas much as anythingthat cradles a body [End Page 45]
in the morningi once wrote my bodyall i have to offera pillow worth savingcome closer, i want to feelthe back of your handscircle my fingers aroundyour wrist and your ragewelcome the cup to pour into [End Page 46]
Brianna Nelson uses mostly words but sometimes images to think about intimacy—its erroneously gendered definitions, its drag under capitalism, and its harmful and healing manifestations. Her work has appeared in Leveler Poetry, Gesture Literary Journal, and elsewhere and has been presented at Crossroads Film Festival and the Contemporary Jewish Museum. She is a fellow of the Home School.
