Marsyas, After by Monica Youn

Marsyas, After

 

Dust loves me now, along with

leaflets, plastic bags, anything

 

unattached, anything looking for

somewhere to stop, something

 

to emblazon. Too painful

to brush them off, the day’s

 

adhesions, too much

a reënactment. I float in my tub

 

of blood-warm water; element

of indecision, if only

 

it could be my habitat,

if only the sawtoothed air

 

didn’t insist on its own

uninterrupted necessity.

 

I hate it, but, lacking skin, I’ve lost

my capacity for scorn: that

 

was my failing—not excess

of pride, but that stooping

 

to pick up their accoutrements,

as if emulation could engender

 

equality. I stain everything

I touch, it all stains me;

 

my raw surface is an unlidded eye,

each stimulus its own white-

 

hot knife, but why would I

submit to be resheathed?

 

To lessen pain? What used

to distinguish me is already

 

defeated, limp trophy

flag of conquest; now I could be

 

like them if I chose.

But the acidulated

 

rain imposes a least

common denominator

 

democracy, it scours away

the pigments they used

 

to humanize their marmoreal self-

regard, their eyes gone dull

 

as the calluses I would rather

suffer forever than become.