Poetry by Elizabeth Bluth

                     ​   collective nouns CC




​Impressions of You in My Body
​
his hand on my hip

                                traces the bone

in the darkness i see

                 only his outlines
above me

                  i have been wanting 
                                                 this

he is gentle
surreptitious even

                                                 but you 

                              loom 
in my body’s memory

prone with 
                his weight 
                pressing against me

                                                 you

                                 your breath
                 on my shoulder

gripping my hip bones

                 taking

i stare into a deep nothingness

static numbness 
                                               fills me

you have invaded my body

                violated 

                                                my intimacy

without even being present

someday i will forget you

and find peace

​



To Feel Alive, But Only Just

I only exist within a small chasm 
in my own body,
separated by a layer of dark space
from actual sensory feeling
as if there are two parts of me:
the body I wear and
the conscious spirit inside.

I cannot push through the wall
I built around my internal self.
I am numb to everything,
calm on the surface,
but inside I scream and shake.

I am somehow both trapped deep within
and watching myself from the outside,
but with no control
over how my body reacts.

Everything vibrates. It is as if 
I experience tinnitus on a cellular level.
A murky covering separates any rational thought
from penetrating through the veil that is 
my depression.

A kitchen knife. An exacto blade.
A razor from the shower. A thin
paper cutting blade from the scene shop.
I cut. The sting of the sharpness slicing open
my skin is the only thing that cuts through 
the depressive cloud I’m bound in.

My inner self breaches the surface for a few moments.
I am alert and terrified. I do not want to hurt.
But the physical pain draws my attention away from
the internal damage that is clawing away at me.

And then the wall returns. My clarity once again dives 
back into the murky deep. I am numb, but alive.

And yet is this really living?

​

Elizabeth Bluth is a writer of fiction, poetry, and plays. Her work has appeared or is upcoming in LIT Magazine, Emerge Literary Journal, American Writer's Review, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, and others. She has a BA in Theatre and Creative Writing and an MFA in Fiction from The New School in NYC.

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