The mind/body problem had always seemed a stranger,

a gothic house of horrors, spiderwebs on the doorframe.

The word: Dysphoria.

The mind/body problem is not a romantic idea

it is the clawing carnal wrong of a pinch pot

We became acquainted in the mirror

the girl in it, picture of a bleeding heart divine femininity

crushed pomegranate rubies in teeth, and rubies of blood

in silhouettes of leeches on skin.

Squelching slimy slithering under toothy incisions

formed mounds with tenuous flesh.

Stretching and itching and girl-body

became a bug bite.

The image assumed to be me contorted unrecognizable.

I curse the invisible sculptor

a summoned specter who is not the sum of my parts.

She cannot be, this girl-body leech lady of the lake

and where in that am I?

I want to rewrite the rotted disconnect.

The mind/body dichotomy, golden goddess decayed

eaten from the inside, stuffed full shell of a scared little

boy.

I want to live in the forest and dig my own clay

mold the Achillion mind’s eye figment

of a body more cradle than Michelangelo's David

I'll take up the scalpel, slice the leeches

let them slip from under folds of skin.

Sew it back up again into crescent moons on my chest.

Scars are a love song from my body to me

and I hope that they are indigo.