This poem has an epigraph from Marvel, which is,
I feel that cannot feel the pain.
Dialogue.
I overheard my soul complain to my body
that I slept uncomfortably in its stiff bones.
You beat the heart too fast.
Twitch your eyelids.
Pull her muscles until she turns on the light to read.
The body roared, oh no, it's you.
Why did you recall those lovers she turned away years ago?
I felt my soul tremble.
Once she imagined herself water moving slowly all day
against the surface tension, then you
showed her muscles asserting themselves in her skin.
I turned on my stomach knowing I was temporarily
solid but nervous as the soul continued.
You claim she was opaque.
I see her growing clear, a pane of glass I could smash.
How will you protect her from your own changing architecture?
I wanted the bodies lecture on the nobility of old age.
But I heard only pulse knocking somewhere in my inner ear.
Then the soul shouted, in the desert,
I'll show you how sheets of blowing dust sketch
images against the sky of the dead spaces
each particle once graced.
My body raged at the soul.
You'll perish in my mouth when the last breath drawn up
from the lungs turns sour as it floats back.
So I sat up in bed my hand on the light switch.