First Kiss in the McDonald’s Parking Lot at Night

“You taught me how ropes could be tied
so I’d strangle myself,
how pressure could be applied to old wounds
until I cried for mercy”
-Ai, “Finished”

Remembering is shoving a naked hand
into the garbage disposal: blades—too fast
to grasp—peel muscles, strip arteries, sever
joints from white bones. A machine can
handle a machine, a switch enough to end
the mincing. But I am not enough. A body can’t
prevent a mind from remembering what it craves
to forget, forgetting what it yearns to remember.
In these moments of relapse, mind batters body memories
won’t stop the body can’t turn the mind off no switch
exists the body is the only thing left to remove

Cheryl Kutcher