breathing dampness, a blue wash of night sky, gray wild
clouds beneath my skin.
i am torn apart from myself.
imagined (standing, multiplying) as two creatures, two beings,
one of flesh, and i, her host.
the body does not contain the ghost
but binds it
to pleasure and pain,
dual prisons.
no matter how you touch me
i am never held.
these evenings slide on quiet desperation.
dark room cells flush with trepidation;
cast away woman, sunken.
terrible the way
love comes
through the walls
speaks softly to the one
who does not pretend
to need her.
i need love.
what an irreverent thing
to say.
to admit.
to embody.
.
Lately I have written a number of pieces about duality. I am having visions and dreams about twinning, cloning, mirroring, being on two sides of the same room at once. Exploring the idea of the life I am living and the one I did not choose, so many times over, walking right beside me always, thus the two shape one another. Perhaps that is what this strange life is, a looking inside of itself. A body and a mind, and a watcher of the body and the mind. Peering in, wondering who we are, and — if we are all connected — who is “other.”
Allison Marie Conway 