Adam D. Weeks
Instructions for Care
Find where the body ends, in an out-of-focus
landscape defined in thousands of angles, defined as
i.the physical structure of (a person or animal), how we were taught
to interact in a world of steep hills and deep valleys of bones,
flesh and organs that we’ve lipped into our own
anatomy. Some days I see myself in the sky, my own body
ii.the main section of inspection, of a car or aircraft or way of moving
from where you are to where you want to be. In this it seems
I’m a cavity to be entered, a question of what constitutes a body
in the industrial age—so I’ll tell it like this:
iiiI loved her, even if I never knew how to hold
her. I understood the body as a central part
of something larger, and when we touched, we did so under
clothes, as if to say okay, we’ll save that for later. This was
a separation of senses, understanding an image as unreachable, gravel
ground soft inside the lens. All we could
iiibe was a collection of something, of past tense
touches, suggested superstitions about how this body runs
into another,
v.a distinct material object or, similar: an item to be handled with gloves.
Adam D. Weeks is a senior undergraduate student studying creative writing at Salisbury University. He has poetry published or forthcoming in Poet Lore, Slipstream Press, The Shore, Prairie Margins, The Allegheny Review and Broadkill Review.
