Conversations

Allison Blevins and Joshua Davis

I love your body. I don’t love this abyss. I'm angry too. I don't
want the surgeon's knife near you.

I keep asking myself what would I let the surgeon take, and all
I know is: I'd want someone to mind, even if that someone had
never touched me.

I keep a ledger of what they’ve taken: the feeling between my
legs, my feet, left calf and thigh, a small circle above my right
ear. Now my breasts.

I remember a boy from college who was obsessed. He was
saving himself for marriage, but we spent and spent those nights
in his apartment hiding from the Iowa cold. He had a beard. I
was a freshman. Boys at home couldn’t grow them like that. My
girlfriend at home knew about the boys. Not the girls. Then she
came to visit and wrapped both her hands tight around my
throat. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't panic like I wanted to. I
raised my hand slowly and placed it on her knuckles squeezing
and squeezing.

We broke up that night. No one touches me now. The children
are distant. Afraid.

I believe in a soul. How did that happen? It’s been coming over
me slowly. But I can’t imagine a creator or a place we might
gather when this is all over. What good is a soul then? I failed
the how-depressed-and-anxious-are-you questionnaires at two
doctors this week.

A few weeks ago, I lectured on Dickinson. Where is the soul?,
I asked the kids. Good luck finding it. Wedged above the
spleen?

I want to believe I have one, but as soon as I do, I see the soul
shot through with holes, like cheap graphics of sensitive teeth.

I could have been that boy. Or those girls.

I have been, though not with you, the one with the girlfriend,
the boyfriend, the one the husband didn't know about.

And now I pay.

My soon-to-be ex-husband touches me once a week, a cautious
hug when he picks up our child—

they picked a new name. I love it. Like a moth.

I don’t think you imagine your body different. I always have.
Straight hair, flat stomach, smile empty, and innocent too,
instead of this city of crooked towers. Then all I wanted was my
walk back. Now what should I want? My father was a very
different person after his cancer. I can’t say I changed much the
first time. Only 24. I wasn’t even me yet. And the cancer so new
and brief. But now, what if I’m different on the other side of this
cancer?

Maybe I’ll be good at math. Read historical romance. Maybe.
Will you recognize me? Shorn and cut. Skin sagging around my
middle. What could this hobbling thing have to say about a
poem?

Hobbling thing—I recognize that. I have only ever been the
creature (elfin, obstreperous) with the intractable left leg, the
hooked foot.

Do I imagine my body different? I want pecs like persimmons.
I want an ass too perfect to compare to cuts of fruit. I want the
hair I cut off before your eldest was born.

I want the body (any body) that will make men suffer, the body
that will make women gather me in their arms and fawn,
Anyone who doesn't want you is a fool. I will recognize you. I
will know you.

So many things I decreed my body could not do, believing the
edicts came from the tendons and ligaments that never lapse
into quiet, the brain's erratic lightning—

but love, I decided, would be this body's realm—

every room in the citadel has a name. I smashed so much. Now
every room is empty, and the want and I are alone together
finally.

I married desire before I could speak.

I married desire before I had words to tie myself, before
inevitable. I took pleasure as a child. I could control it. I could
own my body in the small space of night before sleeping in my
bed. Just a few thoughts—god how my body would hum.

But how can any of that matter now? In the shower, I fondle my
breasts to preserve them soft and full in my memory.

I used to walk home from the bar topless with a group of women
in college. What freedom we took. We let our bodies breathe the
sweet breath of tulip and ornamental pear. I used the deep V of a
dress or shirt to get what I wanted more times than I can count.
Creature.

Yes.

How’s this for seasick nostalgia? I remember the first time we
talked. You had just moved back to your hometown. I had
come to Kansas all the way from Florida, and people were
disappointed I didn’t look like a surfer. They said so. Out loud.
But you had hair like mine. And when you laughed—so much
light in your face.

I’m in bed alone. My husband decided to paint the bathroom
yesterday. He finished. I hear football on. The deep lull of
announcer and crowd. Not shrill but surprising. An apparition of
spectators. I’m not angry. Just lonely somehow. Among all the
children and pets. I want him to have follow-up questions. I
want him riveted. But that isn’t anger. I hope I fall asleep
quickly—for his sake. One less time he has to listen about
anesthesia failure or how keeping my hair is tied to money.

One less.

I'm in bed alone as well. I have a cold. Last night I had
chills—only for a few minutes, and I realized that every time
I'm sick with even the most minor virus, I think of my dad, his
night sweats, his slipped discs, pain clinics, blood draws.

I have been thinking about your hair and your hands in the
shower, determined to recall, like pressing a prison key into a
bar of soap to make an impression. Sometimes metaphor is too
crude.

Everything is fleeting except pain. You as a baby and the
swarming flies. That image will never leave me.

Sometimes I wonder if that never happened, if my dad
exaggerated what social services found when they carried me
away. Or did he see that sad little tableau? Was that when he
called and said, Enough?

Where was my mother?

There's no one left to ask. That's the vanishing I always circle.

I’m still here. I remember the words. We are always circling our
words. What we don’t say. What we say again and again. And
everything between that means, what?

I'm still here too. Do you remember telling me I made people
fall in love with me? My face reddened. You had done it too,
you said. In that moment—I’ve never told you this—I was
happy I might one day lay down every scrap of armor and
surrender to another person. I did. He left. I didn’t dissolve.

That’s hope. Safe, held for a moment, tight—a bud before
blossom.

Allison Blevins (she/her) is a queer disabled writer. She is the author of Where Will We Live if the House Burns Down?, Cataloguing Pain, Handbook for the Newly Disabled: A Lyric Memoir, Slowly/Suddenly, and six chapbooks. Winner of the 2024 Barthelme Prize, the 2023 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award, and the 2022 Laux/Millar Poetry Prize, Allison serves as the Publisher of Small Harbor Publishing and lives in Minnesota with her spouse and three children. allisonblevins.com

Joshua Davis (he/him) is the author of fiery poppies bruising their own throats, Reversal Spells in Blue and Black, and Chorus for the Kill. He holds an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine, an MFA from the University of Mississippi, and an MA from Pittsburg State University. A former John and Renee Grisham fellow, he offers online workshops and private mentoring at The Poetry Barn. Recent poems have appeared in One Art, The Hunger, and Glass. He teaches high school English near Tampa, Florida.