Sabrina Benaim: first date

Sabrina Benaim

first date

hello. when i say hello, i mean thank you. when i say thank you, i mean i adore you. when i say i adore you, i mean i will check your horoscope. i mean when you leave the balloons that you carry in your laughter behind on my ceiling, well, i like them better than flowers. my body is a garden rooted in gratitude. thank you is the biggest poem i’ve got inside of me. oh, me? i am a campfire cold hearts like to sit around and roast their marshmallows in. when i say campfire, i mean tiny furnace, little light lady. i mean i am not the path of least resistance. but i swear, i was struck by lightning. bang! boom! wow! this one time at Coachella when Jay-Z brought out Beyoncé – i mean, i am flawless… procrastinator. my heart is a messy bedroom i always distract myself from cleaning. i digress…when i say Beyoncé came out, i mean fireworks went off and i cried. when i say i cried, i mean i taught the clouds how to cry for me, dig? i wouldn’t say i’m sensitive, i would say i’m highly susceptible to feeling a lot, and “sometimes there just ain’t enough rocks.” Forrest Gump. when I say my feelings are a box of chocolates, i mean i like to eat them. i also like to get high enough to look myself in the third eye. when i say i like to get high, i mean, sometimes, after i shower i thank the towel. snap, crackle, or pop? me? pop. i mean i’ve got this violent tendency to see a bubble and want to pop it. which is to say: i have held love, but i popped it and locked it, then dropped it and lost it. i didn’t mind. love made me feel like i knew the answer, but when I raised my hand, i was the only one in the room. what I mean is, have you ever felt the ache of swallowing starlight? that cinnamon heartburn? what I mean is, his name is a plate set at the table of my tongue because i learned like to wait for it. if i called the last person you said i love you to could they tell me they felt it? can you feel this? i’m allergic to liars, they cause my tongue to swell and sharpen; bullet flesh tongue. what i mean is my kiss tastes like a shotgun to the lips. you’ll like it. it’ll make you feel brave. my first crush was on Benny ‘The Jet’ Rodríguez. that fat boy ran so fast, he could fly by foot. if i were an animal, i would be a hummingbird. when i say a hummingbird, i mean sometimes my hands forget how to hold, become two teacups in an earthquake. i am a rattle of splintered bones. when i say my body, i meant blunt guts and then some. my instincts are miraculous. i spent an entire year sleeping on a bed of swords and was not cut once. what i mean is my lonely looks a lot like insomnia when you hold it up to the light. what i mean is if i came to you, lonely as a grocery store parking lot at 5am, blowing smoke rings but pretending they are halos, could you believe in the magic? not beauty, not the beast, i mean enchanted castle. my body: space jam. my toothy smile has ways to tell anything else than the truth: flight response. do you ever sit on the end of your bed and listen to the world spin? i hear that song everywhere. when i say that song, what i mean is time. time is a holy catastrophe of heirloom clock faces that don’t fit my wrists. the only instrument i know how to play is a muscle. i like my body best when i am not worried about how much space it is taking up. i mean dancing. when i say dancing, i mean shimmy-and-a-shake-and-a-womp-womp-drop. my swagger has moves like it sleeps in a waterbed. i mean my seed sleeps in its shell. i am best prepared for the worse case scenario. the best case scenario scares me. flight response. my mother tells me i am a bird. when she says i am a bird, she means the whole world is my cage. in my dreams, i can fly, and there is no such thing as a cage, meaning there is no such thing as time. i have been here before. i mean i recognize that moon. i know, there are many moons, and my gratitude eclipses them all. so, i say that you. thank you when i mean hello.