My dreambody’s first incarnation could have killed me and itself,
an irony too clever for fiction: dreambody as fail-deadly,

and to think I did all that for skinny thighs and clear piss,
but no one warned me when I let my dreambody go

that it’d leave a vacuum, and now I want to aspire to be something again.
My dreambody could be anything now: could be fifty feet tall

and made of shatterproof glass.
Hey, are you awake? Be honest: if I woke up fifty feet tall, would you dump me?

I would sew a dress from sheets of kudzu,
and use red clay for cheek rouge,

and the national guard gets called in,
but all their bullets do is crackle my surface. Just by standing in the sun,

I make the city disco ball glimmer,
and people wander onto their balconies to feel the flashing heat of me.

The hitch: I would miss peach fuzz and being held and hangnails
and everything else that hiccups life’s rhythm.

I’m making a point to remember: all I have to do is stay alive,
and I could grow old enough to feel an entire thunderstorm in my kneecaps,

and that’s my dreambody now:
I want my hair to tinge silver and grow past my ass like a cape.

I want to get so brilliant, even my skin starts to look like a brain,
and I want my voice to thin and then begin to tear,

straining under the weight of everything I know now:
the best way to astral project, the best way to kiss,

and in the dream, everyone’s leaning in to listen.

 

Casey Smith is a poet from South Carolina. She is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Her work is published or forthcoming in Passages North, SICK Magazine, Booth, perhappened mag, and others.