Tonight's Poet Corner: Silicon

Silicon
by Belinda Roddie

You don't feel right against
my palms. You say this was done
to make you beautiful. Your tapestry
is patchwork now. One part of you
looks different
from the other.

I was mad for you. Mad for your
bends and angles. Your soft
and your hard. You are reconstructing

the idea of what you think I am
supposed to love. A convoluted
circus of circuits, wired and rewired
to your clueless brain -

the only thing that might
still be
organic about you.

It would be different if you were
doing this for you, and you
alone. You mark
where the needle goes,
and I will respect the direction
the thread moves - where
it tightens, where it loosens. But when

you say that you are
doing it for me, you are missing
the literal, and the figurative,
point.

Don't make me kiss you. Your lips
are so cold, and your chest so hot,
metal-hot, like a stove, like
you'll burn me if I touch you.
I will not go to bed with blisters
tonight. If you come

home with cushioning around
your middle and a gentler
quilt of skin, I may change
my mind. But you'll have to
go back to the seamstress again,
for that, and she will make

tinkers and carpenters work on
you, too. You will be sliced,
doled out, shared, and tied
back together with string. The stitches
will keep stretching, and I
will count all your scars.