What is my body for? In my youth I knew. I didn’t win the pull-up contest, but I won the one where you hold yourself up above the bar, shaking so your chin doesn’t touch the metal. I was in an inadvertently homoerotic sadomasochistic dynamic with a friend around my size, our regular lunchtime game of bloody knuckles turned into a game of him punching me as hard as he could, as many times as we could secretly get away with, in the back bleachers, in the chaos of gym class, on my thigh and upper arm, as I practiced holding my face steady, keeping my lips straight, my voice in, with each hit. When I lifted my shirt or shorts to show my friend the dark purple swarming my arms and legs, his eyes widened and he laughed, not a mocking laugh, but one of awe. It made me happy to show him the colors he made on me. He admired my strength more than his.
Edward Salem is the author of the poetry collection Monk Fruit (Nightboat, 2025). His writing is forthcoming or has appeared in The New York Review of Books, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.
