This Body

A REFLECTION, A SCREAM, A VOW

Being woman is something I am extremely aware of

In the streets of a Palestinian city

On the road while I’m running

In his car on the way home from getting ice cream

It does not matter how I try to cover up

It does not matter how I try to hide this body

This body does the talking for me

Or rather this body is not always as silent as I hope

I wear jeans and high necked loose shirts, and still

Some men will look at me like a body

And not a person

Some men will ask to use me as a body

And not a soul

Some men will want this body

And not me

Carnivorous castanets as teeth like I owe them something

Playing the music that makes my heartbeat race like am I in danger?

I see the wolves sharpening their instruments with wooly wanderlust

Wandering into my streets only to take and disappear

Loot and leave

Satisfy and sickeningly sulk away

I’ve learned my value is more than just giving

I’ve learned that it is not my job to satisfy the thirst of those who ask me to

I’ve learned that this body is mine— not his— mine

I rip the sorry from my mouth with a vengeance

I owe you nothing

There is no reason for this apologetic existence

I have nothing to apologize for

I am woman,

Not sorry

Not something to be given

Not just a body

I am soul and bones and flesh

I am emotion and feeling and heart

I am brain and brilliance and beauty

I am value and worthy and enough

I am more than a body

I refuse to be deduced to just a means to an end

You wonder why I am a feminist?

You wonder why I am so ready to fight?

This is why,

this reduction

The way a man chooses to reduce my existence to just a body

Next time you ask, next time you accuse me of being too much

Too angry

Too ready to fight

Think about who people have tried to make me and instead ask,

How have you survived this world as a woman?

Say, you are brave

Say, I am sorry

Say, you are more than just a body

I am often so aware of being woman

But now I know to hold this body with loving hands

I know to not take cheap love

I know to say fearfully and wonderfully made

Knitted together, body, soul, mind, spirit

No mistakes,

Made

to be

a warrior

a poem for all the women I have been and the one I am becoming

I watched myself disappear

Stealthy magician, holding up a mirror

Funhouse distortion, I was misshapen and massive

and so I popped the balloon

You see when you feel too big you shrink

until your body is too small to hold in your own hands, sliding through the cracks of your fingers,

and so I jumped from palm to palm,

Let them squeeze the strength right outta me

I forgot how to speak

Find your voice, she said

I looked for an eternity until I found it floating above me in the stars,

Reached up, grabbed it

Felt the pull of stardust,

Panic stricken, I left oxygen behind

You see, when it’s been an uphill battle, your own voice feels threatening

It’s taken a long time to get it back

My voice, I mean

Every now and then I forget where I’ve been

Who I’ve been

Who I’ve let tell me who I am

I forget that there once was a time when I shrunk to fit into the crevices of others

This is a poem for the martyrs

the living, the ones who survived

This is a poem for all the voices lost

the comments tossed, the duct taped lips

This is a poem for the girl I was in that pick up truck

And the woman I am becoming

not yet

trying to write a poem about this feels impossible

dry pen, blank paper mind, spinning

I want to capture the way it felt forever

butterflies for me, maybe just caterpillars for you,

heart flutter, wide eyes

wondering if you notice

we danced and I tried not to blink

begged the conductor to never stop beating time

or maybe just asking time to stop completely

it seemed like it did a few times

I’ve been spinning in circles all evening, even after you stopped spinning me

this isn’t a love poem,

not yet

you are simply a happy thought

a reminder that I am alive, that this heart is beating, that I have breath to be lost

Puzzle

Not all stories are chapter books

Some are simply stanzas

Maybe just one word

Ours was

goodbye

the air bubble of silence surrounds it

Like a woosh, it wiped out all things around it

Hung in the empty like a bat taking a nap

One word

One word, but so much story behind it

Yours different than mine

Mine goes like this

I wrapped up my feelings for you in a ribbon,

Tied them to my happiness and watched as they floated helium above me

It’s impossible to get over someone when they keep stealing your oxygen

So I didn’t

I said I did, and I lied

The last time I saw you, I kind of wondered if this goodbye would mean something different

I knew I would disappear into the vapor of the night and wake up new

The puzzle of me would be harder for you to put back together this time

So I knew this goodbye had to mean something different

We slowly faded into our own rhythms

Life becoming more and more like we always imagined

Only separate

And I fell slowly out of love with you, thankfully

I realized it after the last time we Skyped

Goodbye, you said

Goodbye

And just like that my heart didn’t echo I love you

And I knew

That this goodbye

Was different

Jump

Tight rope, rope swing, cowabunga

Fall into the night air

Fall into the net of you

I wonder if you put it there to catch me

I wonder if you put it there to catch.. somebody

I wonder if you put it there to catch someone else

I swam upstream all summer long

You— hook, bait— tugged me with you

I don’t know if you meant to

Maybe your ego was feeling low on fuel

Maybe you needed something to look back at

I am an easy catch

Your words were the bait, and my lonely heart the hook

All it took was you throwing your line out to me

I was hungry so I bit

And well,

I guess I’m just wondering,

Are you the kind of fisherman to throw things back?

forgetfulness part 1

I lay in a dark room

Hoping that this sadness won’t be able to find me with the lights out

I slip and slide into a dream

This dream is the kind where you forget you ever knew me

Only I’m not sure why I’m not waking up

I struggle against a current of goodbyes and obvious endings

You are not coming to rescue me this time

Should I let the current wash me up on the shore of this next stage of life without you?

I’ve never been good at letting go of the past

You are not my forever

You are not the way this story ends

You are nothing but a memory

Prophecy

I tied myself to the thought of you and took it for a walk

We went around the world and I held it up to the light of cities, magnificent sunrises, and handsome strangers

I imagined you here

And before I knew it I was living in paper dreams and impossible daytimes

Letting the thought of you take me for a walk

It whispered lies that you never told me

Trying to convince me of something silly like you loved me

And so I found myself saying I love you too to empty walls and ghosts

I once screamed it at the top of my lungs from a mountaintop and I thought I heard you echo back

Turns out it was just my anxious heart

I sat in that lonely for what seemed like a hundred years

I woke up as an oak tree in your front yard, only to discover I had wasted a life waiting

My leaves had fallen and the thought of you had scampered off to new adventures

You visited me once, but I never had the courage to reach out and touch you saying

Oh darling the adventures we could have had

on silence, road trips, and forgetfulness

it was summer

and it was hot

I remember because I drove hours without air conditioning just to see you for 24 hours

I stayed with a friend for the night just to leave at 5am to leave with you for Ohio

We drove for hours until we got to the theme park

and it was hot

I remember sucking on ice cubes to cool off

We spent the day chasing adrenaline highs and vulnerability

I always wonder why I let you know me so well

I always knew you would forget me shortly after I left into that hot Indiana summer

So I am not surprised at the silence

I am not surprised at broken promises

I am not surprised at your forgetfulness while my heart seems to ever be stuck in the past

how I hate the way seasons change

my heart murmurs your name in my sleepless nights and I wonder if I will ever be okay again

if I will ever stop sticking you in my poetry

and the thing is there’s no one to blame

it’s not like you were ever mine to miss

I miss the trip that was our shadows, talking long after the sun went to bed

I keep saying I will forget you too someday, but I’m not so sure

you are sleepless nights and vacuum hearts

you are long stretching roads and laughter filled midnights

you are three hour dinners and chicken sandwiches

and me?

nothing more than a ghost

fading faster than breath on a window pane

a poem for all the times I cried this week

I close my eyes and try to forget you like you’ve forgotten me

I told a friend the other day that we have so much more to grieve, leaving all that behind

After all, your life just keeps moving

the same as it always has

just without me

and I know that my memory didn’t just disappear like I did

but with every day I feel it slowly fading

before long, I’ll just be a friend from a stage of life

past tense

Erasers hurt

I think for the first time I know why soap in the mouth is a punishment

I can feel the sting as you was away any evidence that I still exist timezones away

I keep almost expecting to hear you ring my doorbell

I’d step outside into that Indiana starstruck night and we’d go for a walk

The kind of walk that always left me wanting more

But then the moment passed

And I could feel in my bones that it was just me

I was fading then too

always fading

I guess it’s easier to forget a ghost

easier to wake up in the morning and think you just dreamed me into existence

Pretty soon I’ll have washed up on the shore of another person’s memory

It won’t be the same

It can’t ever be the same

But maybe by then I’ll have cried you away,

waterfalls and creek beds taking you to whatever life you end up having to swim upstream to find

the poem you will never hear

it was just that your storm found mine

and somehow the mix calmed them both

I found refuge in your thunder

comfort in your rain

it was something about being completely drenched

you know, that kind of wet that makes you wonder if you will ever be dry again?

and I loved you something terrible

like drive through the night of your eyes and wake up in the morning of your smile

until country roads and cornfields feel like a blurry memory

your soul feels like it found mine a long time ago

and mine, well it feels like you were what I’ve been searching for all these years

and maybe years from now,

we’ll be sitting in our rocking chairs,

talking about how we survived hurricanes and earthquakes together,

just simply by waking up next to each other in the morning over a cup of coffee,

or by dancing in the light of the refrigerator open for late night snacks,

or just by simply breathing in harmony.

they say you’ll find what you’re looking for where you least expect it

so when that tornado spit me out in the middle of a nightmare

I said no way

but here you are

and here I am

I guess I had to stop telling time to stop

so I could find out what living really means