"Underbelly" by Nicole Homer

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend September 25, 2019   Underbelly   Nicole Homer

Wouldbelove, do not think of me as a whetstone until you hear the whole story:   In it, I'm not the hero, but I'm not the villain either so let's say, in the story, I was human   and made of human-things: fear and hands, underbelly and blade. Let me   say it plain: I loved someone   and I failed at it. Let me say it another way: I like to call myself wound   but I will answer to knife. Sometimes I think we have the same name, Notquitelove. I want   to be soft, to say here is my underbelly and I want you to hold the knife, but I don't know what I want you to do:   plunge or mercy. I deserve both. I want to hold and be held.     Let me say it again, Possiblelove: I'm not sure you should. The truth is: If you don't, I won't   die of want or lonely, just time. And not now, not even soon. But that's how every story ends eventually.   Here is how one might start: Before. The truth? I'm not a liar but I close my eyes a lot, Couldbelove.   Before, I let a blade slide itself sharp against me. Look at where I once bloomed red and pulsing. A keloid   history. I have not forgotten the knife or that I loved it or what it was like before: my unscarred body   visits me in dreams and photographs. Maybelove, I barely recognize it without the armor of its scars.   I am trying to tell the truth: the dreams are how I haunt myself. Maybe I'm not telling the whole story:   I loved someone and now I don't. I can't promise to leave you unscarred. The truth: I am a map   of every blade I ever held. This is not a dream. Look at us now: all grit and density. What, Wouldbelove   do you know of knives? Do you think you are a soft thing? I don't. Maybe the truth is: Both. Blade and guard.   My truth is: blade. My hands   on the blade; my hands, the blade; my hands carving and re-carving every overzealous fibrous   memory. The truth is: I want to hold your hands because they are like mine. Holding a knife   by the blade and sharpening it. In your dreams, how much invitation to pierce are you? Perhapslove, the truth is: I am afraid   we are both knives, both stones, both scarred. Or we will be.   The truth is: I have made fire before: stone against stone. Mightbelove, I have sharpened   this knife before: blade against blade. I have hurt and hungered before: flesh   against flesh. I won't make a dull promise.            Copyright © 2019 by Nicole Homer. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 25, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About This Poem   "I was in a workshop, actively not thinking about my private heartache when I—the group—was told to write a love poem. I wonder about the impulse to persist, to try again, to love despite all evidence suggesting one may not be well suited for it. I'm trying to reconcile optimism with honesty and the statistical likelihood of not only failure, but injury." —Nicole Homer   Nicole Homer is the author of Pecking Order (Write Bloody Publishing, 2017). She lives and teaches in New Jersey. Poetry by Homer   Pecking Order (Write Bloody Publishing, 2017) "I Have Read the Whole Moon" by Emily Skaja "After He's Decided to Leave" by Elizabeth Acevedo "Ways to Harm a Thing" by Kaveh Akbar September Guest Editor: Eduardo C. Corral   Thanks to Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2020, who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Corral about his curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. Your Support Makes Poem-a-Day Possible   Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. This free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on the weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038

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