Solid

If you are the smudge of dirt

that rinses off, easy,

with a few drops of soap,

then I am the berry-dark splash of wine

that mars the fabric irreparably.

I have said

I feel like a ghost, a phantom

with one foot in the sixth dimension;

I have tried

to unite the fragments of me

on one plane, this plane,

to color inside these lines

and fill my translucent skin.

But I have also rebelled

against you, your wandering mist,

a presence that drifts

and wafts

and never seems to stick;

I have recoiled

into staunch, gasping solidity,

refusing to be the absent hand

whose fingers one might slip through.

I need to be

for me, so I know

once; for all

—I am.

I want to be

for them, so they know

they’ll never flicker, never phase

—never split apart, scatter—

—never scramble for smithereens

of a thing once whole.