Fissured Tongue Series
Muscle Memory
by Ruhi Jiwani
Fissured Tongue Series Vol VI | May 2025
by Ruhi Jiwani
Fissured Tongue Series Vol VI | May 2025
“The Thorns of Anxiety" by Ann Wong WanYee. Oil on canvas, 80 x 60 cm, 2024
Muscle Memory
We lie on the divan, the drapes drawn.
I take off my dress and wear his singlet.
He shows off his prowess with the gymnastic rings
hanging from a bar, offers me slippers
to go to the bathroom where the floor is
wet, then makes black tea and asks me if
it’s good. I refuse to praise him
for something so simple.
Later, we lie on the ground, and he says,
I can’t move. Can you adjust around me like water?
I don’t want to be the one adjusting,
but my body contours around him on its own.
I take off my dress and wear his singlet.
He shows off his prowess with the gymnastic rings
hanging from a bar, offers me slippers
to go to the bathroom where the floor is
wet, then makes black tea and asks me if
it’s good. I refuse to praise him
for something so simple.
Later, we lie on the ground, and he says,
I can’t move. Can you adjust around me like water?
I don’t want to be the one adjusting,
but my body contours around him on its own.
***
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About the Authors
Ruhi Jiwani's poetry has been published in The Eclectic Muse, The Binnacle, Off the Coast, Muse India, The Four Quarters Magazine, Femina, North Dakota Quarterly, Jubilat, OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters, New York Quarterly Magazine, and others. She has a Master’s degree in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, and is currently working on her first novel. *About the Work
The poem came from a conversation about adapting and the trancelike moments that may result, perhaps so strongly that, eventually, one couldn't conceive of their life without it. |
About the Artist
Ann Wong WanYee obtained a BA in Visual Arts from Hong Kong Baptist University in 2020, and I currently live and work in Hong Kong and Sweden. "I use different media to record and reflect on trifles in life. In my works, I explore the possibilities among media by duplicating, extracting, covering or simplifying individual elements and then combining them in a specific way." https://wanyeeann.com/ Wong's art piece, "The Thorns of Anxiety," is this volume's featured cover art. |
