Rachel Bunting
Alice in Wonderland Syndrome*
Sometimes I have no fingers at all,
rather a fat pair of claws, raw and pink.
The knot of cells in my head grows larger
each day, turns me to a lobster, a crab,
some exoskeleton creature with a shell
that breaks away in large flakes, brittle
after too long in the sun. Everything seems
wrong-sized; even my tongue is swollen
against my teeth, so clumsy it trips over words
like clearly and monolith. Massive. I’m amazed
I don’t wobble more, weighed down as I am
with these bulbous fingers. Still I remain
upright, my tongue sliding out between lips
too thin to contain it, swallowing pill
after pill, trying to deflate my hands, my legs,
the blooming rose inside my brain.
*[A]…syndrome of altered body perceptions…so called because
of the resemblance of its symptoms to the fluctuations in size
and shape that plague the main character in Lewis Carroll’s
1865 novel. –National Institutes of Health
Rapunzel Syndrome*
Just a feeling, curled, a purring
cat in the stomach. That’s not desire.
Split ends stick between my teeth,
tickle my lips open. My tongue purples,
strangled within this thin strand. Snake
my body like a drain, follow the esophagus
to that small pocket and you’ll find
it tucked inside, even its name
something grim, like a fairy tale:
bezoar.
My belly is hard: a swollen
hive of secrets trailing off in a long,
damp tail. The doctors speak in whispers
outside my door, their words forming
ladders, perfect double-helixes they
try to climb. I am a puzzle of tightly
wound coils they will never solve.
*An extremely rare intestinal condition in humans
resulting from eating hair. Characterized by the body
of a hairball in the stomach.
What, then,
can I tell you that will make you love me
less: that time I was twelve and pulled an old camping
knife on the boy next door who couldn’t walk? How I
drew the rusty blade along his useless, unfeeling leg
until the fine dark hairs were tangled in a small red river?
What if I told you it wasn’t a knife I pulled, but my small
still-forming breast, uncovered in a quiet moment while
his mother was in the kitchen making us soup for lunch?
How I might have pressed his fingers to my bare skin,
maybe pushed my mouth into his? Then: how he begged
me to stop, nose leaking, glasses angling sharply into his cheeks
as he tried to turn from me? Maybe if I said that I wanted to hurt
him, to frighten him with power held in my own fragile body?
Or worse, that I wanted only to give him something I feared
he’d never get on his own, that I was taking pity on a small
broken animal? And now, what if I tell you: this is what I dream
of at night, his hot wet face before me and this ache in my body
like a fire I don’t remember how to put out.
Obedience, My Father
If she asked you to light the house on fire
you would. No question. Your eyes close
each night on stone blue walls, on the dog
sleeping at your feet, on her peaceful face.
When I was fourteen she slapped me. I called
her a bitch. I’m not sure which happened
first. You close your eyes purposefully.
Do you love it here? I dream of flames
locking you in, your whole life consumed
in a few minutes, and you with it. She works
the garden, turns the dirt for celery. She likes
things that grow cold, feeds you the seeds to ease
the pain in your joints. She knows what is best
for you. I see you everywhere now: the book store,
the gas station. Outside the firehouse on a spring
day. The bus stop I pass each morning as I drive
my warm car to work. You are two hours away.
Your hands are beginning to shake, your beard
going gray. There are matches in the kitchen,
her voice on the phone. Never mine.
Someday the earth will open its arms to you.