On Transubstantiation

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 On Transubstantiation

an exercise from Danusha Lameris using Susan Firer's poem Transubstantiation as a jumping off point. Enjoy


I

Before it is love

It is just friendship. An agreement, 

an exchange of favorites, time

bound by two. But once it is love

the binding melts. Everything is fire

then. Time sizzles like a string

on either end of the dynamite stick. 

You are crackling towards the other now

revelling in your separateness. He is not you

you are not him, and oh how wonderful 

that knowledge feels. Before the explosion, 

the dynamite is a promise. A blowing apart

of each separate timeline, a portal to somewhere new. 

After the stick blows, there is a settling. A choice

"Are we going to walk though?" After I hold my palm out, 

it's no longer my palm. It's, a peach to be 

carefully kept, lest it bruise, lest it spoil, 

lest it rot. Before you decide where your palm will land, 

it's a bird of prey, a peregrine falcon, in the wind. 

One quick swoosh, and Before is killed, 

one quick snatch, and Before is held limp, a relic,

a branch in the talons of what comes next. 


II


Before she's a woman, 

she's just a girl, and before that

a mere babe. A fetus, 

a zygote, a twinkle in some other woman's eyes. 

After she's a woman, 

she becomes slut/prude

mother/notmother

single/married/divorced

good/bad, faithful/faithless

After she becomes a woman 

we treat her body like a canvas

one that is either blank, or painted on, 

but never anything else. 


III

Before it's a book, it's just

a sentence. Some string 

of letters horse racing out ideas. 

Like Plato's forms, the story exists

somewhere else. Before it's a book, 

there's no author, just some kook. 

After it's a book, the kook may remain, 

the word "author" gets spliced like a 

Thanksgiving pie. A self published author?

a real author? An agent-represented author?

A debut author? A prolific author? A world class

author? All of these slices fragment only after

it becomes a book. But before it's a book, 

its a series of letters, a sentence, a frame

and some pacing shapes in the mind's clouds

just waiting for their storm. 


IV


Before we are friends, 

you are just some woman at the yoga studio, 

with a black mat, and black leggings, and a 

tight little bun to match your waist. 


Before we are friends, 

you are just another body. One with elbows

and a belly button, and vertebrae

and shapes. 


Before we are friends, we are both

all tight smiles, courtesy nods 

and "after you's" inhales and exhales

on command. 


But after, after we are friends? 

Now you are eyes, and a mouth and teeth. 

Now you are iced coffee and tarot decks

Now you are laughter, and a star chart reader, 

and soul sister, and someone to eat the Sour

Patches with. 


After we are friends, it's as if there are no bodies

at all. And only when we embrace, am I reassured

that you do exist. 


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