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Specific Gravity

Once my heart was ballast in my chest,
so sinkingly heavy I couldn’t stand.
I slept for as many hours as there
were memories. I couldn’t bear

to look at myself, at my bloated face,
my dull eyes. As time went on, I learned
to throw everything, even my marrow,
overboard. Now, as I go, I seek

mirrors, sometimes on muddy puddles,
sometimes on cups of tea. The cup’s surface
reveals more of the future than the leaves
on the bottom do. My countertops

are polished marble – black with a white-
veined pattern like the blue veins
on my white hands. I need constant
reassurance: I am still here, though

a wisp and air-headed, nothing grounded
about me. Even to me it won’t be a surprise
when I float away, but I haven’t
yet, at least not according to the sliding

glass door at the corner convenience
store. I order a foamy cappuccino
so I can see my image refracted
into thousands of rainbow spheres.

My bones are hollow and brittle.
My eyes are sharp and bright.
I wear a necklace of paper clips
to tether myself to the earth.

Listen to this poem here:

About This Poem: I first wrote this poem at Peter Murphy’s Quickie Getaway. (“Pucker” was written that same day.)Because of the prompt, the original draft included specific place names. The words Wawa and Staples came out during revision. More importantly, the original poem was written (and published) in the third person. I imagined a mythical bird-woman as I wrote it. Three years ago, a friend helped me assemble a poetry collection. She suggested I change this poem to first-person so it would better match the other poems. My relationship with the poem changed with that revision. It was no longer about an abstract, imaginary woman. It was about me. This poem captured how I felt when I was undergoing chemotherapy. It first appeared in the anthology More Challenges for the Delusional Edited by Ona Gritz & Daniel Simpson. It’s a collection of Peter Murphy’s prompts and the poems they inspired.