Photo by Wendy Scofield on Unsplash
I would kill to smell formaldehyde,
to hold the scalpel and knife in
my gloved hands
that were blue like that hospital, blue
like almost death, blue
like veins screaming at me
from grandfather’s weathered skin, wanting
something I could not give or take away
with my hands so blue
like the journal mother wrote
everything in while she made
her acquaintance with death,
as if documenting the objects
in the room while watching
her father die
could prepare her,
could prepare me,
could preserve, could save each
water bottle, cushion, blanket,
plate, grandmother’s painting,
monitor—
I would kill to smell formaldehyde,
to be in the science lab, to see
the dripping sclera from the eye
of the butchered cow
sterilized for dissection,
to watch
your hands mimic mine,
mine mimic yours:
digging for color.
* * *
to see the sclera, the first
thing to remind me of
the rock you once held
in your pocket for days
until we were alone,
until you could finally unfold
your fingers and tell me I was the only one
who would touch it-—missing entirely
that the gem had to pass
from your hand
to mine.
How beautiful I thought I was,
how special I thought my hands were—
how wasted they feel now,
covered in blue like death, like
water bottle, cushion, blanket
blue like
plate, grandmother!s painting,
monitor—
* * *
to see the sclera dripping from your hands
to re-feel the moment before I saw
your hands handle the knife
with the same care you touched my body—
almost indistinguishable from how you held
the mutilated eye in your hands,
I convince myself,
the eye and I are different:
they had already been
touched, preserved.
They saw darkness
differently, they see it
blue? like light
blue? like color
blue? like ease
blue? like sex
blue? like love
I would kill to smell formaldehyde, to bring back
the moment when the toxic chemical
releases from the jar,
the moment when the smell corrupts the room,
clouds my vision, induces a dizzying
response, my body aware of the
unnatural substance and yet I remain
in the room just a little longer
as if staying here could conserve
the moment before I let myself realize
all these things must have passed through:
the eye, the rock, grandfather, you
other hands before touching mine.
How similar I really am to that eye:
refusing to see the dark,
covered in chemicals,
veins forever preserved and
held in toxicity
Samara Landau is a recent graduate of Skidmore College. Her work is published in Beyond Words Magazine, Cathexis Northwest Press, The Closed Eye Open, HerWords Magazine, and The Dewdrop. She has been an editor for Beyond Queer Words LGBTQ Magazine and for Six Feet, a senior project consisting of art and poetry by Skidmore College students. Landau’s poetry explores themes of relationships, displacement, memory, queerness, lineage, form and language. When she’s not writing, she’s rock climbing or hiking and writing fragments of poems in her notes app.