Body

By Ehtesham Rehmani

My Body’s your unnatural obsession,

And my vice beyond natural mention.

A thousand miles of skin, clawed by age,

ever-laid before your purview’s embarrassingly limited range.

The cells within it grow restless with time

No longer in the glory of their prime.

You choose to see what They care not to see;

You choose to see the seething marks collectively depart.

Yet, I feel that you see nothing of me — no, you choose to see nothing of me.

For that, I wish you would skin me — claw me — bones apart,

for once to eye — to stroke — the soft flesh within me like fine art.

For this skin that is supposedly mine (and supposedly yours too) hasn’t felt further away from me than now,

and so your cinnamon-coated love to it doesn’t sweeten it (or me, or us) anyhow.

I seek more than what my Body sings along to your thirst,

These yearnings will eventually make it burst.