
DEVOTIONAL WITH PEONIES
there’s a red cloud in your hair, oh ranunculus,
and I’m constantly misspelling your a for a cup:
like the cup in the word bifurcation
which seems to resist its own base, making space between its hands,
like how my singularity is a kind of kindness:
the sound of my skin against my skin.
the sound of skin:
say: peonies say ranunculus
like softly kissing the inside of three fingers three times. there’s kindness
in holding yourself, in cupping,
to catch the icy water in your mouth, your hands
in running it over the bright and bleeding splits
there’s a darkness inside peonies, inside sliced
open things making the sound of skin against skin
and my body itches through my hands
between probing and tearing this ranunculus
but holding instead like a brandy or bell
enacting towards the creature that we are, a small kindness
and i feel like i’m going kind
of insane. Reality splits:
in the white hours of the morning there is my voice and my open
mouth but in this moment I could say something.
something about holding any desire
the frictive want inside my hands
to disappear into the body of language and reach our hellos
into a kind of future
where my body opens (say: ranunculus,
like softly kissing the insides of your fingers, their branching
say peonies, their sound of skin)
and unfolds into a field of eager cups
drinking all the family in the dirt drinking it up
all their arms reaching if you press your hands
to your ears it’s the sound of one palm against another
the kind of tender touch
too often reserved for a body that isn’t
the body’s own oh body, that i could hold you
with the whole velvet of a peony, kindness
like the music of my skin, my holding my hands.

Tara Jayakar
is the founder of Raptor Editing & Press. She works in web and content editing and lives in Brooklyn.