Emily Brenchi
EDGE
I love the feeling of your Adam's apple against my palm.
How it drags a shock-suck of air down your throat.
With the smallest part of your fingertips you trace
the withered plum lines on my belly.
Ugly but organised, like they were carved in ritual.
You push two fingers into the snagged flesh
and feel the softness of my major organs.
I think of how the cold hands of every doctor
felt against that skin, all of the tiny needles
that the scar tissue's suckled on.
But hospital sheets don't bunch the way ours do
around my broken-violin back.
That other pain is so pale now.
Sometimes when he makes me come, I cry.
Tears chasing each other down velvet-cake cheeks
because you are dangling me over the edge of a cliff.
But us crips, we are well-acquainted with the edge.
We love, every day, with life's dirty fingers clasped
around our ankles, our limbs swinging over a drop
of salty wind. When my body is restored to solid ground
you say [again & again] you say I've got you.
Emily Brenchi is a 25 year old writer, actor and disability rights activist. She gained a BA in
English and Drama in 2012, from the University of Greenwich, London. She is currently based in Oxfordshire and
as a person Crohn's Disease, is interested in exploring ideas around disability and chronic illness on the page..
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