How is it that, in 1914, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska drew a nude of me,
1914 – when I wasn’t even a thought, not a little bean or nucleus,
no sperm swimming to egg and egg; fallopian tube in utero but no me
or my parents, or even theirs – yet there I am in the glass in the pencil
barely there (it must have been a hard pencil), my chin, odd jaw, my nipples – recognisable
sturdy shoulders, masculine: I’d look from the shower to mirror
age seventeen and misty and think ‘what masculine shoulders’, now they’re shared
with Nude Study and I’ve got a new sister. I am you, Nude, as you are me,
and my lovers’ mouths have touched your pencil lips too, fluffy tongued, left a scuff
on the paper; my renaissance in the curve of your thigh, the flick
of your half-drawn hand, and there’s a fray in your lower left corner, hidden by the frame
and, Nude, I am frayed there too, watching your waist and mine as a mirror
my eyes looking back inside of your eyes, grayscale;
greened.
