body stories (part iii)

a few thousand years ago when i was crashing into rocks and giving birth to this body burden i sprouted a forest on my chest of two little touch-me-nots and the right one became touchable first

my right nipple: i touched it when i was seven to see what it would feel like and i liked the feeling so i tickled it and used a feather on it and later forgot all about it when i discovered my clitoris, the long span of childhood isn’t different from one night of sex is it? the nipple just gets forgotten under the thunder and rain of other body parts

now it is just a sore, wrapped up, padded up, pillowed part of me that you are not meant to see, that I am not meant to talk write scream moan cry about even if it cracks and bleeds and milks and flowers but I am developing slowly a practice of love and care and compassion

so, the first thing i do when i come back to my apartment from a day of laboring under this white sky against white walls is take off my bra unbuckle it from under my shirt squeeze my arms through the shoulder straps slip the cage through my sleeve without taking off my shirt first

you see, i’m just lazy like that, but i will let this right nipple of mine breath freely when i can when the white walls aren’t closing in when the hybrid monster of memory-oblivion will allow me some respite

what happens if you clip a touch-me-not from the stem, does it react, does all feeling die then, does it become touchable for the whole goddamn world? after all my critical theory books imply that there may not be any such thing as consent in a world ruled by ideology, ugh i will feed this book to the memory-oblivion monster, let him chew it and vomit it out while riding a merry-go-round

you see, i just don’t like it when my right nipple is taken lightly, or taken too seriously that it has to turn into a theory, my body is not a theory for your academic consumption

my right nipple is air and wood and earth and fire it burns and gushes and sometimes it creates a breeze and sometimes it hurts like hell, like today it hurt and i did not know what to do should i call the doctor or should i hold it and sooth it myself, i always choose the latter

you see, my nipple is a landmark that I don’t want inspected by some doctor, it holds the vestiges of my seven year old fingernails, the residue of her hot saliva, drippingdripdrip downward as her tongue rolls and circles against my heavy moans,

you see, my nipple is not for inspection under your microscope, it is a historical site, but not for historians no, these salivatory drips and red hot aches and cotton padded cages, none of these can be archived

there are no visible remains

so, I put my hand under my shirt and touch the softness softly and my nipple feels like

it is made of nothing