I WAS ALWAYS A TRANSFORMATION OF STATES

If only I were a perfect girl coaxing the dirt off radishes,
the mutton into cubes for stew. If only I were a perfect knife.

A sharpening. A seamed shirt of leather and suede. A fingertip
padded to feel just enough but not more than. If only I were

not too, just a bowl of rain on the back porch transforming
into snow. If only I were a girl choring through her boredom,

with her firewood arms and her fear of the axe. I’m jealous
of everything. I want more hands. If only I had been perfect

as a ghost without keening, a switch and its lecture about the theories
of theft and belonging. If only roses filled the roost. If only taken

care of did not require taking, sweetness didn’t require dissolution.
If only to wish did not mean to recognize the necessity of change.

I’m sending an appeal to the apple trees: just cut those petals out.
And the Bradford pear with its stupid nudity. I say I want hands

but I don’t want what they have wrought. If only happily
wasn’t the word beyond which all plot is impossible. Is stasis

then what happy is. Even the lawn laid flat wants buttercups,
wants weeds reaching beyond its definition of self. If only

the world allowed wildness. The salt and the sugar both singing.
All those hopeless flowers. I pinch their stems and let them die.

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Emma Bolden is the author of a memoir, The Tiger and the Cage: A Memoir of a Body in Crisis (Soft Skull), and the poetry collections House Is an Enigma, medi(t)ations, and Maleficae. Her fourth collection, God Elegy, is forthcoming from BOA Editions. The recipient of an NEA Fellowship, she is an editor of Screen Door Review.