Out of Body
I’ve climbed the cliff carved into your jaw
the sweeping valleys from throat to collarbone
a living mountain range steeped into your shoulders
and down the smooth canyon walls of your spine.
in the magnitude of shattering bones, I can’t
tell where the earth ends and where we begin.
veins thrum, rivers rushing to the falls
our blood vessels collapse and we paint
purple blossoms on our skin, eternal
flora in the shape of your crooked smile
when we’re nothing but words spilled in a hurry
not yet a masterpiece but with all the makings of one
charting the elevations and coordinates
of our breathing landscape.
Andy VanDoren is a queer, synesthetic poet inspired by natural phenomena. Themes of their work include abstracting reality and unreliable narrators. Through poetry, they paint pictures of how the world looks from inside their mind. They are also published in Celestite Poetry, Ink Drinkers, Lavender Bones, and more. You can find them on Twitter @raggedypoet