How much must you scorn yourself
To desire to cleave yourself
In two
And hope someone will notice
The new creature you’ve become?
Or perhaps it is an act of love
To make your outsides match your insides
Show the world something split and broken
Descaled, ripped open
Accept the stab of metal blades
With every step on dry land
Slick rocks, grit sand, soft grass—
All knives
Our human legs are things of violence
They kick and scramble and open wide
Underwater you were safe
Surrounded by waves that rocked you to sleep
A fetus, an embryo
Safe everywhere but within your mind
Where desires woke from their slumber
Like an undertow
Dragging you
Into the most dangerous places
Wanting things you could not possess
Wanting love, but what is love
If not pain?
What is love
If not a split, an opening
An offering of your self to be
Ruptured
In the hopes that someone will see the wound
And fill you?
Love is not like a fish’s tail
Slippery scales that fly you through the waves
With no boundaries, no broken bits, no fears
Love is an anchor
Too heavy to lift on your own
Love is a cry in a raw throat
When you have given up your voice
Love is something you lose
It slips out of your grasp with the knowledge that
Perhaps
You never possessed it at all
Love is something that leaves behind
An echo you can’t see
Though you hear it singing you to sleep
A whisper soft
As sea foam
And as hard to hold
Stephanie Parent is a graduate of the Master of Professional Writing program at USC. Her poetry has been nominated for a Rhysling Award and Best of the Net.