because there’s something I should tell you,
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀but you’ll need to come to me. I reach
and the rock of me stays,⠀⠀⠀⠀
just here where I’m mortared—
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ I must, then, own my arms, my stone,
and the place I sit. By a law⠀⠀⠀⠀
of contiguity, you who saw
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ my limbs move before thus remember
the self you’ve seen since, as much place⠀⠀⠀⠀
as woman, mostly unmoving as I am.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ You can pull me together fine.
This was my dream all along, wasn’t it?⠀⠀⠀⠀
to call sensation safe, for one, and not
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ to abandon a place again. I’m a site,
now, to visit, as one might a monument⠀⠀⠀⠀
(if you care for history) or portrait (if
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ scumble, stipple, and shade). A cut
of the rest. Once-unruly, once-human troubles⠀⠀⠀⠀
pare to affairs outside me: coils
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ of earth sift at my base;
lichens plot me and spread; winding⠀⠀⠀⠀
sky strips and plays me; rainwater falls on,
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ then lifts from. This was the kind
of form I wanted: like a landmark—⠀⠀⠀⠀
to be part, and not so pained.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Only sometimes does my casing
send scratches up my arms.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Claude Cahun, Je tends les bras, 1931/1932
Emma Aylor is the author of Close Red Water (2023), winner of the Barrow Street Poetry Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in New England Review, AGNI, Poetry Northwest, The Yale Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. She lives in Lubbock, Texas.