High Carbon

all memory is born somewhere:

damp skin shaking fever salt lick,

lantern off ‘cause you never liked the shadows it made.

you’re my brother

til we die

or until one of us figures out how to love

somebody else.

you show me your palm and say

my name and look at how your life line is

so short and I got lucky because mine is

unbroken,

it runs all the way off the edge.

I think it’s not worth it if I’m alone, but

stay silent. I don’t want to hurt your feelings

just in case you decide to

leave early.

you show me your wrist and say

the world is a really big crack in

something and it’s up to you

to find the edges. I dig your something

out of my skin and you call it

a corner.

sun-boiled gravel,

mandoline to the ball of my foot, I want to feel it all

so I can tell you everywhere that it hurts.

I’m starting to think other men don’t

do stuff like that and

now I want to be someone else just to prove

that they’re real.

over joyful, I can be something very clever and I can

be something very mean. what I’m saying is that

I’ll give you two hundred dollars and a shard of milk

glass if you can

describe the color of an opal

without using the word bone

or picturing my feet.

a long time ago we were still porous enough

that we probably could’ve been helped if anyone tried, but

you don’t get awards for surviving something

until after somebody else

dies from it.

white gold and bleaching in the sun,

I’ll give you mine in

slices

if you carry me home.

***

Savanna Frances Grinspun is a documentary filmmaker and poet from Tennessee, currently living in Brooklyn. She studied Comparative Literature and Cinema Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and is now working on a full-length collection of poetry about love, loss, and violence within the confines of the family unit.