Poetry by Robin Percyz

    Mendhak CC



CRUMBS

There are so many ways to feed people.
Lately, I’m most satiated by the crumbs.

The crossing guard asked for my name
after a year of blowing smiles
at one another.
Hi Fred!

Toothy grin swallows my face
and doesn’t fade 

after he does. The kind of smile you have to force
the doors of your mouth to shut.
To hear your own name attached to someone else’s joy. 
How easily we forget that we are here. 

I’ve had indigestion in my brain for a while now.
The acid burns my body into the couch for days.

Then a friend tells me they want to be unalive.
I imagine my hands resuscitating them,
how they’ve practiced
bringing something to life, 

kneading dough.
Needing them.

It helps to be the hand
that cradles the spoon
for someone else. 
Giving sustenance to others

is somehow a full bowl
that feeds our own growl.

We say, I love you.
So much depends on the I
in I love you, that you refuse to abandon
yourself first 

because you can’t help anyone
if you’re not here. 

I love you.
It’s a richer, meatier offering.
You pour yourself into it.
The crumbs, 
the caramelized bits of daily minutia.
I want to suck the marrow

out of life
render it down, the deep flavor
from the bottom of the pan.
It craves to be devoured. 

The crumbs are the I in
I love you.





ALL IN THIS TOGETHER
 
What are we if not
together?
I don’t want to sit in the empty
home of that answer. 
My refrigerator hums in baritone, a depressed roommate.
It takes all of the women in me to lift this body, walk the old dog of myself.
 
When I’m out there, I look for it.
The little big things.  
The ways humanity exposes itself under the wool of winter.
When we bundle ourselves in isolation and method act madness,
but the warmth of our skin bares
itself in the gentle ways we save one another.
 
When the door is held open for someone’s arms full of struggle.
The way the creases hugging our eyes work harder to hello
when language is locked by a mask.
When someone asks the unhoused person what they want
to eat, how a choice can feed them
dignity before pizza.
 
The municipal sanitation worker sways down the road, his cape
of dreadlocks float behind, like a superhero. He greets every human.
I told him I believed him, that he wasn’t acting,
that he formed a beach out of February with his smile.
He said, we’re all in this together.
 
I take him with me,
my sharp edges sandpapered smooth
as I swim upstream
inhaling the air someone exhales and again and again.
We save each other from being alone.
And now that I know this togetherness
I can’t unknow it.
What are we if not together?

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Robin (she/her) is a queer writer from New York. As a member of The Society for Menstrual Cycle Research, she presented her piece, “Boxing and Bleeding” at their Conference in 2011.  She was a competitive amateur boxer for four years and now strives to help others feel visible through her writing.
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