by Abs Evans
I recognize you
In the thick of bleeding heart bushes
blue jeans streaked with dirt
crouching with pink earthworms
draped through your fingers like
the heartstrings of a life you can
almost grasp —
I know the way you walk along the bottom of the Delaware river building rock castles
that will never reach the surface. The way you look up at the broken sun
through the currents, feeling the silent rushing pull of water.
The sweet draw of fluidity. You do not have to remain stagnant.
I found the silver tooth you left for me in a time capsule, mixed in with the shark teeth
you plucked from the ocean, mingled together in a plastic bag,
as if they had all come from your own sharp mouth.
You don’t have to prove to me that you were tough.
You had it all right back then. Masturbating before you had the words for it. Climbing trees in thunderstorms just to scream into the wind. Cracking geodes wide open and staring into the purple stony center of the earth.
Back when pleasure was a nameless warm glow in the dark,
created in the deepest part of us.
Before you started to seek it in other people.
Before it became wrong.
You’ll meet a couple men ten years from now that will kiss you so hard
you swallow your tongue and forget how to speak up for yourself.
You’ll do anything to remain silent. Don’t.
This is when you need to scream. Louder than when you faced down lightning in the arms of a cedar. Crack open hearts to find yourself reflected in them again. Leave them broken. It will hurt. It does not matter. Do anything to find yourself again.
Remember how your fingers bloomed inside yourself
like saplings reaching toward sunlight
both embracing and being embraced
swallowed whole by your own
softness.
You have to remember —
remember
how the sun looked from the bottom of the Delaware River all those years ago.
How it melted when we knew our life would forever be fluid
as the blood that runs in our veins and the water that rushed past our faces.
How gender would forever bend
through our sharp teeth no matter how much we swallowed our tongue.
It was a promise made to ourselves
in the silent womb of the river
that no man could ever contain us
as long as this life flowed from
within us.
Abs Evans (they/them) loves to disappear into the woods and pet moss. They write poetry to make sense of the world and connect with other people. The best way to access their writing is through their instagram: @abslikeabdomen