Charms Against Dysphoria I & II

Charms Against Dysphoria I

To leave your body-
Or rather, to leave your body and live,

you must cross a body of water.

An ocean is best,
fathoms of salt and cold and dark holding your body

on the far side, until you come back for it.

You tell yourself you will never go home.
You will live as a new creation,
stranded on a strange coast and lit with distant lights.

But you do come home,
and the old shade sits up when you do.

—

If you cannot cross an ocean,

cross the river in the center of your city.

Mark distance by bridges, time by tide.
Stride over that flowing heart two, ten, twenty times a day,

until you forget what side your body is on.
Until you stand in the shallows looking for it.
Until it walks up behind you, and waits.

Then come home, holding your body by the elbow,

leaving wet footprints on the floor.

—

If you can find nothing flowing and final to cross,
Whisper your name into the mouth of a girl who loves you.
If she gives it back to you three times,

(falling from her tongue like the Perseids,
perfumed with jasmine,
nestled in hope)

then plant that name under your ribs and live

in whatever riotous garden grows.

Lie back and crush the flowers with your body,

everything sweet-smelling and bruised.

—

Go driving with a boy whom you love like a spark loves a field.

If you find yourself immune to immolation, do it again.

Drive fast in the dark until it hallows you,

your body lit and limned with starlight.

Put a hand out the window and let the wind hold it.

Put a hand on his and let him hold it.

You are somewhere and nowhere and not alone,
and there is almost peace between you and your body,

which is unspooling a laugh to stream behind you,
mirth a long, pale ribbon falling out of your mouths.

—

Sit in old churches, even when you don’t believe.
Rest amid golden wood and the ghosts of wax and myrrh.
Hold your body’s open hands in an echo of prayer.

Train your open eyes on the plaster body, suspended.

Contemplate the miracle of that body,

of something even stranger than yourself fit into flesh.

And that, when they took that body away,

the mystery rose up to take it back.

—

Thread a needle with three threads.

One shivering and adorned with stars.
One bright with laughter, blushing and bursting.
One falling apart in your fingers.

Stitch the hard-earned secrets of yourself into your skin.
Treat your heart like an egg

and love the soft and messy thing that shakes off the shards.

Kiss your body on the mouth and say,

you incarnate fool.
I’ll take you back.

 

 

Charms Against Dysphoria II

Move to a new city,
red brick and grey stone, split twice by a river.
Find yourself a small room painted pale yellow,
the first and last room you will live in

where only you and your body have the key.

—

Cover your mirrors like the dead are looking.
Cover yourself like you are still looking,

peering at your body,
familiar and foreign and forever a stranger.

Let yourself and your body live slant,
shadows to each other,
visible only at the edges –

long fingers and thin wrists,
blue-laced feet in the bath,
movement in the corner of your eye.

One of you is haunted, and one is a body.
One of you lives here and the other

lives just a half step to the right.

—

Touch the ridge of your collarbone to remind yourself

where the edges of your body interrupt the world.

Those landmarks of incarnation:

the door to your back,
the floor pressing against your feet,
your hand on your chest like a charm,
like rowan, like iron, like gold.

Touch your body like a lover

who is leaving in the morning.

Touch your body like a corpse,
strange and holy and slightly cursed,
owed the last kindnesses before

it goes on a long, long journey
you do not wish to follow.

—

Find the words that love you
like a bell loves a hammer.
Find the words that sit inside you,
still and silent and heavy.

Grab the rope, pull hard.
Let the words ring through you utterly,
let them summon your body home.

Speak them until your lips split,
sew them into the linings of your coat.
Cast them into silver rings,

vows you can twist when you’re nervous,
prayers you can drop and chase across the floor.

—

When the words no longer work,
sit in that small room, face to face.
Wear your new clothes, your new rings, your new name.
Wear your old skin, which is pale and bright and catches like a cobweb.

Decades your body has waited with you.
Decades your body is willing to wait.

You breath in, and your body holds it.
Your body exhales and

you walk out,
locking the door behind you.

But the walls remind you of sunshine,
the doorknob is iron,

your body has the key,
clenched between its teeth.