FLOATER

My body is pickled
from the Georgi orange soda sea
and wandered into a tideland
with Sylvia,     and my sister’s chemicals.

I ask my frame to forgive,
but the stomach is a sandbag
and the collarbones are leeches,
smarting from the pooling.

With two of me in the world:
           my figure will speak
at my mind’s funeral,              like a maggot
growing fatter from endings.

Mad at me,      me mad at me,
singing the banished skin lullaby
eroded from the torrent,
a retched up cycle
back to brain   to blame          to bile.

Is this how we talk to ourselves?
Back and forth            mind to flesh:
a willful flood  of charming    self contempt

Each thigh fold is a lie           
permanently in the pleats
and my forehead lines are trapping pits
lying in wait for when I imagine
if she’d finished the                cut.

My scaffolding reminds me:
I am no keeper,           no rock,           no savior,
just a fluid sack that could not defend,
but took notes for my own finale.

***

Originally from Raleigh, North Carolina, Maeghan Mary Suzik (she/her) is a New York City based actor and poet. Some recent publications include The Minetta Review, What Rough Best through Indolent Press, Oakland Arts Review, Catfish Creek, The Rational Creature Magazine, and October Hill Magazine. Her poetry has also been displayed through The Hickory Playground’s virtual Quarantine Diaries, the 2019 NYU Diversity Arts Festival and The International Human Rights Arts Festival. Maeghan is currently a reader/voiceover artist for Passengers Journal.