Improv 2, Week 11

Abscission
-Jillian Weise

Your favorite post-coital position
is nicknaming my scars.
The name for the railroad track
along my back--Engine.

The dots on my wrists from IVs
Spot. These are not-me, the not-leg
beside the bed for you to trip over
like the beautiful word: abscission,

to cut off, in botany, to shed leaves.
Medical terms must communicate
clearly, I tell you, but that doesn't stop
you from asking what it feels like

when your hand is here, now here
over here. I think of the wives
of the twenty thousand masons
who raised the Taj Mahal. And how,

when it was finished, the emperor
ordered a mass amputation of thumbs
so the craftsmen could never build
a more perfect mausoleum. Did their

wives ask question while playing
with the remaining fingers of their
husbands' hands? Did they ask, Can
you feel my hand here? How about now?


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And I don’t stop you from asking why I exit
the room directly after sex to shine your clocks.
Nor do I require you to ring me after five days
in which we lay on my grandmother’s quilt,

naked except for socks and my tiger’s eye necklace.
I trust in the shape of your mouth as you formulate
words that sound like stay, eyelids, peeled peaches.
We give into this clockworked habit of apologies

when it comes to departures but I pale at the hard luck
of settling. I arouse in you myself and word of mouth.
What remains as whispers is everything you find ugly
about me, but you are drunk on my body so we part

post-coitally clean as an abscission. Nothing is clean.
We learn that from our mothers and what we also learn
is that you should never over-stay your welcome.
I’m running out of polish and you are running out

of clocks. I’ve buffed the two in the dinning room
eight times this week. They are starting to know my hands
as well as you do and that I always wink when I’m through.
Let me tell you that by my birthday I’ll be gone
and you’ll have to peel peaches with somebody new.