Cleaning

I wish I could slough off my fluffy edges along with the dead skin.

I want to scrub at my face till the flesh is gone, polish the bones and chip away at them like limestone,

Smooth myself around and around in my palm like a ball of clay 

Till i’m a tiny pink marble-  hard and shiny and cold.

Defined and clear and precious.

An ice cube that never melts. 

But instead I am milk

Indistinguishable and murky,

refusing to be a liquid or a solid. I am jelly and yeast, breathing and wobbling over the sterile glass beaker, unruly and mischievous and disappointing, like a cheap water balloon.

 I am a collection of lumps – growing, pulsating, oozing pink fluid, bulging and puckering against milky forgotten skin, patched together with flimsy membranes and tenuous stitches. 

I am trying to dilute myself, loosen up the sludgy gloop with water so it trickles down the plug hole but instead i stick and stain the ceramic, enjoying its cold alien solidity and thinking off new ways to scrape the knots out of me and cleanse the lumpy muddled up bag.