My sex cannot be packaged,
my sex is magic.
It is part of a bigger story.
I am whole.
I exist
when you are not fucking me,
and I will not be cut into pieces
anymore.
— from “Fantastic Breasts and Where to Find Them”
Sometimes your body is not a wonderland. Sometimes your body wants to be wrapped in clothing or bedsheets or not the arms of someone who will no longer know your name. Sometimes we are metaphors for magic. We are sidewalk gambling. Sometimes we are strangers to both those in front of us and the mirror.
Brenna Twohy’s Swallowtail (Button Poetry), is a reminder that “we have built cathedrals / out of spite and splintered bone, of course they aren’t pretty, / nothing holy ever is….” but we can either be the stories others tell, or create our own. We can live as Potter or Draco. We can peer into the mirror of Erised and see whatever it is we really believe. Or maybe we believe in magic, but are wary enough to know the trick never stays hidden forever.
In the end, we can either be real to ourselves, or momentary to someone else. The choice is ours. But, the “moral of the story is / I will gut you if I need to. / I will carve my way out / using only my teeth.”
Purchase your copy of Brenna Twohy’s Swallowtail from Button Poetry.