Fluid (i)

​Some nights, both Xs fall left of center,
my center left less than content or steady
and I vibrate at the wrong frequency tonight
with a pitch too high, sucking a tuning fork
to still it in the sinus cavity— 
spit metallic, the shrill hammers my ear drums tonight
only tonight I want only tone deafness tonight.

Fluid (ii)

 
I am asking about water. Or rather,
whether the water in me is the water that moves
the direction I need to see or be seeded:
that is the question. How conceited a focus— 
walking, navel-gazing, dowsing rods
copper-crossed in my direction,
impaled by surprise and your affection.

Fluid (iii)

​​I am most alive forty minutes shower-scalded,
drowning myself in the waves of your let-down bun
(tea tree patchouli stale sheets)
Pheromones: you: so human,
me, hemorrhaging in your hands
forgetting the Other feeling, how I see me— 
at least until I see you see me.

---

Sara Hunter-Campbell is chronically ambivalent and endlessly enthralled, working in mental health, writing inconsistently, and living in southwestern Pennsylvania with a ferociously lovely wife.

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