To be a body bent beneath a hand,
to contort the soft parts of myself
around the prongs of a hard fork, that
blood-trident that wants to spear me
away from the screen, pull me up from calm
ocean static and the wet shield of innocence,
yank me drenched and screaming onto dry land,
finger and push that wave of heat
into my heart for the first time, those gnashing teeth
that tongue a name into me, that force me
to have a name, to be named, to realize all things are
thinged and that my worth is measured
in tentacles, in the thrust of appendages
and machinery that I never wanted and
never wanted to know; to be eight-limbed and
thrashing, to be taught that revelations are singed on the skin
in pulses of dark-ink, in night-time motion, under
the guise of protector, under the knife thrust
of a reckless chef as he cuts away my pieces,
as he presses my meat beneath a hot spatula,
as he serves me, contorted and seared, to a future of bodies,
a room of naked, a scorched church, a car-shaped bed, mouths
unclenched and eager to pop me in

even if I don’t fit.