Masochism; The Body as A Flowervase – Two Poems By Nigerian Writer, Marvellous Mmesomachi Igwe

Masochism

You run to the wound, & you touch it, attempt to drag it into a caress,
but it is there no more. The solace you felt in the nexus of a scar, the
comfort. The sorrow clothing your body, your naked body, the
nostalgia coating your tongue.
Gone, all gone.
Truly the body heals but the mind does not.
& here, the wound is not only corporeal.
& the mind still hallucinates the injury. Wishes it were still torn.
Wishes it were still shedding the red petals off your vines.
Say, peace is a scar.
Say, a scar is the remnant of the cane, the belt, the palm. The gun.
Eternal reminder of the gain you had flagellated
out of a loss, no matter how small.
This body, nothing more than a sheet wading through time, aching
to be scratched by everything that touches it.
You touch the spot where a hole should have been,
where the memory should have crimsoned,
& all you meet— skin.
Brown & supple, skin anew.
& you are whole. But are you not alone,
all alone?

The Body as A Flowervase

I am trying not to let this body
remain brittle, like porcelain.
No, I do not want to return back
to that delicate state, to creep
my way back into that torso of
glass. O, the fragility of it all.
How a touch can become a
hammer on the heart, how a
gaze can crack open the throat.
Everyday, the body becomes
more fragment than flesh,
more splinter than skin. I fall
in love again, & again, & again,
I shatter into a thousand pieces.
I, these shards roundabout &
beside, light in broken china,
broken light. As if to say, give me
your sight, caress me once again
& I will whirl whole. I will revolve,
re-evolve into a complete man.
But nothing is ever truly so. Truly
nothing breaks like the body,
like the heart, like the soul after
it has been hollowed by grief.