How do you feel inside your body? Are you comfortable? Trapped? Home? When you lie down, do you cherish the way your skin pulls down on your bones? When you stand, do you admire the flop of flesh in secret places? In water, does your weightless hair feel like a halo? Do you like to swim? Do you wear the water like a gown with no hem? Do you feel the water inside of you trying to rejoin its mother? Do you know how osmosis works? Was high school biology class an insult to how magical your body is? Do you have sympathy for the frogs? Do you have sympathy for all animals? Do you think of the world and cry? Do you think of the universe and hold your breath in awe? Does awe make your mouth hang open? Does your mouth fit comfortably with your lover's? Do your past, present, or future lovers appear in your dreams? Do you dream of whales and wonder why? Do whales feel as big as they really are? Do you feel as small as you really are? How well do you know the back of your hand? What have your hands touched? Do you ever feel like you might never be clean again? Do you clean your body as thoroughly as your house, and vice versa? Is your house an extension of your body? Do hermit crabs consider their snail shell homes to be part of their bodies? Have you ever stolen someone else's body and made it your own? Why is your body your own? Does your body belong to the world or to you? Do you belong to the world? If you went to Mars would that God adopt you? Do you believe in God or something like her? Do you feel the energy of the universe in the wind on your face? Do you think the universe is beautiful? Do you feel beautiful? Trapped? Comfortable? How do you feel inside your body?
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Dear Squid,
If only my body glowed in the dark like a thousand stars, winking into water where night never dies. I would become the universe and eat silver fish. Instead I am caught in this fleshy pimpled mess of a body, depressingly opaque and with no built-in lamp to read by.
Yours, Rose
Dear Rose,
Do not lament your opaque paper skin nor your liquid-ruby blood. While my body may be the complexion of pulsing flowers, yours shines white as whipped cream in a blue porcelain bowl resting in a parallelogram of sunlight. My body is nothing more than pigment and mucus, while yours pulses fire each second. I’ll look at your stormy sea-stare with my liquid jewel eyes and know that we are both art.
Love, Squid
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Excitement builds in the tangle of my belly. What will it be like this time? It's always different. Will it be warm and wet? Or hard and fast? Dangerous? She waits for me, undulating in her bed. She calls and I must go. I undress, leaving warm velvet in my wake. There she is, inviting but not hurried. I smile at her shivers. I am no virgin. I slip into her. Oh, what a feeling. She holds me with her cold hands and I cry out. She is everywhere. Gasping, I emerge, wet and alive, her briny scent all over me. We are divine lovers, the ocean and I.
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The pummelo is not peeled, but unwrapped. It is a gift, after all, so I tear off the skin in anticipation. Once it is undressed, I insert my thumb into the central cavity and split the body apart, breaking the tissue that holds both fleshy halves together. I strip the membrane from the shiny jewel pulp with satisfaction. Inside is a sunset; I let the rays of sun drip down my chin as I rip, tear, and devour this grapefruit the size of a planet.
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Your body is composed of exploding matter. Star matter. You matter. All matters. You are a star flinging dust into the dark as you take a lifetime to shatter your confining body and free yourself. You are a celestial body. You are old as the universe and new as a lamb diving out of his mother in early spring. Grow, die, and grow again. Use what is around, and all that's around is stardust.