​I let everyone sleep while I
pour over pillow stories,
wondering if
this is  penance
for greedy moments of slumber
taken in lieu of
coffees shared  between friends
 
tiptoeing around, foraging
for snacks and coffee  at 5AM
slowly crinkling a Cliff bar
out of its  plastic prison
I become  what I hate
ruining soft hours with
incessant but quiet  noise
who knew it only takes
six weeks to turn over
a lifetime of  public grievances;
no rest for the modestly
wicked  sure
changes people
 
odd hours  make you powerful
the master of all sleep
except your own,
crawling into crooks of arms
whispering “it’s time to get up”
like the little voice  deep down
beckoning me to jolt
awake  and prepare
the day  for the sun
to rise and strip me
of my squandered magic

Previously published in {m}aganda magazine, 2018, under the title “The Body of Lilith”
 
They said my body belongs to my future husband. Be touched by another man and I’d be marked as impure. In high school, we were required to wear long-sleeved, loose blouses and long, plaid skirts; in spite of the rage of summer, all for the image of purity, enduring the heat and suffocation for the sanctity of femininity because isn’t that all there is to being a woman? A woman has to be pure until the day of marriage. There is no room to explore our sexuality—why would we even have to? We were created from the lower rib of Adam, molded to be a lifelong companion of a lonely male.

They said my body belongs to the men I meet day after day. In college, I was told several times to lose weight. I’d look better with less pounds, they said. More men will find me attractive if I get slimmer, they said. No one wants a fat, sad girl, they said. There is a standard of beauty you must uphold: huge breasts, slim waist, small feet, round ass, flawless skin, upturned nose, perfect teeth—these are your keys to success. Life is so much easier if you win the genetic lottery. Take catcalls as compliments; at least someone thinks you’re fuckable. Wear something tight but decent. Let them see how defined your shape is, but leave something to the imagination. After all, you were made to become a spectacle that feeds the male gaze.

They said my body belongs inside four walls, preparing dinner plates and doing laundry. I was not born with physical strength ideal for hunting. My bones and muscles were meant to carry a child, not the universe. Running a company, a country, the world—these are a man’s job. I ran everyday errands. At 20, I already get asked how many children I want to have, at what age I plan to settle. I tell them I don’t want to give birth nor get married. “What is the point of being a woman then,” they ask me, “if you won’t build a family?” Is the essence of womanhood solely to become a mother, become a wife? Can I not aim to fall in love with another woman, to conquer the world of art and science, to start a revolution?

They said my body belongs a deity I cannot even believe in. My physical pleasure was an offense to my so-called savior. They keep asking why I do not pray. I keep asking why god is portrayed as a male, when the truth is that women are the ones birthed to create. I will remain agnostic if being faithful means having to kneel in front of one more man just for me to prove my loyalty, just for me to feel that I am alive.

They said my body was everyone else’s but mine. I may be in charge of its function, but not of its appearance nor purpose. Life as a woman continues to feel like living in a room you cannot get yourself to call home, no matter how familiar you are to every crook and cranny, every edge and stain on the cream-colored walls, because something about the place still leaves you alienated, and this thing you just cannot come to grips with, the je ne sais quoi bleeding through the windows, it always finds its way into your little private space, painting itself on the walls and leaving you yearning for comfort from when comfort should be found in this very room.
 
I am done apologizing for giving into the temptation to explore more than I am allowed to. Why am I even living within restrictions when I can own the stars? My body is scarred, exhausted after decades of thinking that I was birthed solely to become a subordinate. Women deserve more than this, but the problem lies in the sad truth that most of us were brought up believing that we do not have a say. Women must realize that our lives are a constant struggle, and we are warriors in defense of our femininity. There is a need to rebel, assert ownership of our own body, find strength in what they call imperfections. We are not boarders of our own bodies, and it’s about time we show the world who’s truly in control.

Last summer I learned that victim was synonymous to sinner.
            I never set out to stand on a pedestal, be on the other
                        end of an empty prayer but the sting of concrete
                                   against fresh wounds, of flesh burning
                        did not numb me enough to not feel
            the way they held me down, force my mouth open
            to accept unwanted Eucharist--
 
            words began to lose
their meaning the way they robbed me of mine.
 
I began to call abuse as experience
because no one believes in demons anymore:
how they claim women’s bodies as theirs, feed                    
on their blood and turn them into slaves, insert themselves
in places they only want        
to destroy. Suddenly whore became another word for survivor.
 
I lived with violence growing inside my womb.
I tried to swallow as many pills as I could just to make
its heart stop from beating, its mouth from
 
consuming all that is left of me,         
but I never got to undergo a proper abortion.             

​i remember when my dreams weren't about you, when i saw incandescent lights and pulled my own body from the river, bruised and rotten. now, i anchor you to the bottom of the ocean, where the water is red and tastes like blood and salt. we sit on parked cars that aren't ours and watch the moon grow so big she touches our hands with her tender blue warmth. i tell you i've never seen snow before and your laughter fills me to the brim, it's excessive, spilling in all directions until we’re both choking under it and i look at you but you've disappeared, leaving behind a soft silver outline and fragments of the memories we had together: touching sweaty foreheads under the blinding february sunlight, me tasting your apple cider mouth until my tongue felt sticky, sewing a gardening patch to the inside of your mothball covered denim jacket. come morning, my body is damp and weightless. your absence is reminiscent of my early-teen heartaches, thick and syrupy. when i dream again, you're looking at me with grief and joy at all once. i sew the image to the back of my eyelids. this way, i can keep you forever.

​My mother told me she was a witch
She would prove it on the cribbage board
A game never lost
She hid herself behind card games
Pick up five, queen of spades
 
One word too far and she’d let tears fall
And the blame would rest on our cheeks
Like the freckles we stole from her
Her teeth, the white chipped peg of my childhood
 
She casted spells over us
Quickness to anger
Rounded nose
A sadness that lives in our blood
Conjured in the womb
 
Her heart-hope festered in us
Swaddled, we never stepped far from home
 
My mother told me she was a witch

​you don’t always want The Poem to grab you by the jaw and kiss you hard or gut you like a fish or show you the face of God or even scream I LOVE YOU in the pouring rain. in truth, you like it best when The Poem takes you to a little farm with a wildflower field. you like that it picks you up at noon on the dot in a used Toyota Prius that smells of take-out Cinnabon. the trunk is packed with a baby blue picnic blanket and plastic champagne glasses. you both drink Evian water instead of pinot grigio. you like that The Poem hums the melody of a romantic-era choral arrangement absentmindedly within earshot. for a moment its world revolves around appreciating the apple orchard. for a moment it is overcome by a silent sky-gazing daze, it has gotten lost in the middle of the summer scenery.  it politely pays you no mind, and you suppose it is forever lost in reverie, but then you catch its eye and soon a rosy smile blooms between the Granny Smith trees. it doesn’t command attention on purpose, it’s just that natural Mercury conjunct Venus magnetism. this aspect shows in the way it speaks. the conversation is always a bedtime story. commentary is proverbial. it explains things in the tone of sunday school sermons with the passion of an overzealous conspiracy theorist. The Poem compliments strangers on their superhero backpack pins and red lips, messy buns and waterfall braids, loud laughs and eloquence, like a totally tipsy girl at a house party named Taylor. (although The Poem is entirely sober.) it prefers to solely wear the same three sweaters with the occasional genuinely pretentious beret. you find it funny that The Poem tries to be vegan. it orders the salad instead of the prime rib. but it still eats the brioche. it is the monarch of social butterflies, yet it identifies as an introvert. it attends a knitting and baking club with a gang of groovy local grandmas and makes the bed with fresh rosemary and lavender scented linens every morning. during autumn and winter months, The Poem hosts informal soirées in which she personally serves every guest her father’s homemade vegetable soup in handpainted ceramic bowls; in summer it prepares cake bites for brunch. The Poem is written to be played affettuoso legato. it plays Prelude In G, Opus 32, No. 5 by Sergei Rachmaninoff on Sunday evenings before it goes to sleep in a silk eyemask, under a pink princess canopy at eight. The Poem loves you, and shows it. it is not self-aware in the least. in the best way.    

​one two beads strumming down her pink
thumbs & astaghfaar astaghfaar
she sings for her fears
are all too real.
My naani, her anthem of bliss is for
me. Her moonlight of the times when she
lit up the cowfat lamp. Her
beeping radio sound before blackout
Our veranda flooded in eulogies whispered
by naani. she gifts me talismans
she kisses for the umpteenth time before
bed. her poems are mercy. She
calls me mercy. calls me soothe. butter ghee.
calls me the warm oil she floods
my hairline with. Her touch - all feeling
Now
When the gappaywala wails, wait
wait, let silence brood the air &
this is harbinger, she is that autumn
tree I'm preserving. Don't you see
She is me. She/me thumbing tasbeehs
I collect pearl lotuses and embroider
her sapphire necklaces. her tinted
hairline down the equator

Embrace me in dying light
no whispers, no moving jaw.
sealed mouth you carry
me – in your quake
singed with all the powers
of manhood/perfection.
 
The first time he called me fat
& sick & useless like the Chinese
leftovers, Trump and armpit hair.
 
He meant it.
 
He meant it when he staked chemo faggot
through my pelt. I blame DNA like
an unwanted reality, like that surgery
scar kissing my belly. My war prize.
46 chromosomes and my dying light
46 chromosomes & nowhere left to go.
 
He meant it when he pushed me
down the concrete sidewalk, smell
burnt tyre & sugar spit like it’s heavenly.
like chomping down nails is an act of god.
He asked me to shake the dust & I prided
forever. in sap, skin – all the flesh &
this saturated oil in everything in me.
No blood, no room to call home
adipose a native city. Plump, yet mellow
 
Whisper in my skin
& love me no more

​✱✱✱

​Lately, I can wade into the ocean
without imagining drowning
 
I don’t consider the feeling
of opening my skin
with every sharp item I encounter
 
And I can hold a pen
without contemplating
ramming it deep into my skull
 
So now I’m not entirely sure
what to do with them
 
How do I write if
I’m not doing it
to keep the pen on paper
and out of my forehead?
 
I know my rage is still there,
I never have to fear losing it
 
But it’s resting for once
and I’m afraid
if I try to pluck a poem
from the blue-hot embers
I’ll wake up every flame

​✱✱✱

i watched you die last night and left you in the snow
packed ice against your ribcage
keep him like this forever, i tell the coyotes that gather at your boots
he loved basketball and his father, i think or just
basketball.
 
was i meant to survive this
 
your diary on my bedside table. that long finger tracing the veins of my cheek.
i was always blushing. now i wash my mouth out with soap. erase the grit.
i meet my dad for coffee and tell him that you left because we weren’t in love anymore
and it can be true. and i put more creamer into my coffee. and i try to feel something
again. i retrace my steps down chase avenue. past UDF. deleted voicemails. the
newsreels. the national crisis. your blue eyes. your dirtiness. oh my god.
 
you kept me so hot it was like you were alive.
 
on the street we used to live on,
i can become anyone:
your mother, a carcass,
streetcleaner, your boss
the woman that lives in the alley
telling me people are so goddamn mean,
a little boy, banging a stick on lampposts down the street, yelling each time
oh my god, another one? he’s laughing. it’s a game, his mother asks him to keep up--
oh my god, another one?
oh my god, another one?
 
lover,
are you eating
 
lover,
meet me where we vanish into white
 
i can’t find your body anymore
was i meant to survive you
 
oh my god, another one?
oh my god, another one?
oh my god, another one?
oh my god

​✱✱✱

​arms and legs tuck to make a cradle: a turtle dream.         i snuggle into an alcove of thoughts and sheets
         silence replaced by                       the echo of whitecaps.                warm darkness beneath the blanket 
lit up            by bakugou’s explosions,         izuku’s countering kick,       the sensation of flying. i pretend  
        to be epic                   daydreams of dodging attacks, saving pedestrians, telling a joke that’ll make
                       someone smile.              i want to smile. i want to grow flowers          and firecrackers
inside bone cocoon, shell full of ocean sounds, anime cries, someone telling me that i am good enough.
 
there’s a yolky sunlight         dripping into my eyes.               i collect what i can         and dive       until only
           a lump can be seen above         the waves. i sustain myself on iced tea, poetry, and boku no academia.       i stay caught up, still indecisive about my own on my future.         i am wondering when i will stop
              referring to this shell as external.        i’d like to be a hero to someone. no poster or news articles.
i’d like to make someone smile                 because sometimes i do not remember how to and maybe by
     enfolding another person inside the shell--       i am nudging my head out from beneath the sheets.       
forgive me when i forget        to reply to text messages               or am too tired to call you. i am not
            ignoring you. sometimes,            i cannot handle the noise of the outside world,       retreating into   my own music.          there are times when i desire              to be condensed,        full of energy,             
              a blind star overlooked by telescopes and astrologists.      content to stay a secret
 
          for a little longer.              i wake up,     sit in the morning like a turtle opening itself to the outside. loneliness is not             a bad thing.           being soft is not a bad thing.       this body        maybe more soft        than hard,           but i have survived this long without being eaten, without losing        
myself to scorching sun or birds of prey.               i bend the blankets around my body into a functioning carapace and plastron.        it solidifies, hardens. i am safe.                   i am solid, strong. i have not been    
              eaten. nothing will eat me.       my shell is the resonator of an instrument.          someone is singing,   
airy and tangible            like the universe.                it might be God or the wind or both.                i am here
      listening and filling myself up.           the airwaves are full             of low-fi and sea sounds.                                
                                                        
you might think that i am afraid of something.           sometimes i am.          there are times
when i do not recognize              my friends. my eyes fissure over, everything             far away, dizzy. sometimes they wave and i miss it                  by accident.      i have been trying to wake up. sometimes
i catch them.               it confuses them, when they get a few feet away     and i suddenly say hi.              i see 
            their confused expressions, the why-didn’t-you-see-me in their eyes,                     and i do not know how to tell them          that I am a sea child            far from home, making do with two legs, classwork,
            winter months.               that sometimes i am sleepwalking, sleepwaking, that sometimes                       i am only a sometime presence.          i return             to my sea cave                    and unpack my tension
         from the day. i love the mornings.         when i wake up, there is a brief moment when i am
warm, still drowsy             and genuinely love myself.            i wish i could                    stop saying    
 
      
                                                                                                                      sometimes. 

​salt. sugar. light abs make a gradual disappearance, jelly a soft replacement.
love handles firm yet malleable in my hands. i grip the smooth flesh, pull.
the flesh is warm and spiderwebbed with stretchmarks. trace my growth
around the curve, down between thigh and spiral outwards to return to the
handles, rub them over. do not wonder whether or not someone else will
one day grip these handles, want me against them, want me to stay.
 
salt bones, sugar muscles. flab that hangs, flaps like heavy wings.
my arms hide small diamonded muscles beneath their plumage.
these lungs can carry a song through a storm. these legs can take me anywhere,
even if they’re burning. this larynx can capture and release stories.
i hold my body and my body holds me and we, as one, continue learning how
to navigate one another. i name every place i touch with a memory.
 
weight is always a scary thing for some reason. that slump over the
border of my light blue jeans is easily seen through certain shirts. can’t tummy
tuck. i used to wear my body like another thing to deal with. thighs felt too big.
never had a flat stomach. couldn’t aim the ball into the basket. couldn’t run
fast enough to win the game. i watched anime and imagined being able
to command my body, be in tune with its movements. flying kicks, backflips,
hand-to-hand combat, limitless pain tolerance. sometimes i still wonder
if i can fly or if i am too heavy.
 
i am tired of being told that this body is a project that i must continuously
work on. i can eat pizza and greens too. vegetable stir fry or chicken salad
then wash it down with water or a stewart’s orange cream soda. i like
to wear baggy shirts not because my rolls will roll but because i don’t like
things that feel like an extra layer of skin and maybe a baggy shirt is like
wearing a hug, which i don’t get enough of. i don’t want a man anywhere
inside my perception of myself.
 
i am not chocolate or caramel or any other flavor don’t look at me as if
i am something to order off of a menu something exotic or greasy. i taste
like clay, wobble like jelly, sway to a rhythm of church, rain, lo-fi, loneliness.
i cannot forget the trauma inside the black body. i am a crossroads
of two kinds of suffering which creates a unique kind of suffering.
i see this in the way my sisters and i are told to wear ourselves as if always
ready to be taken, to defend, or to run. i am in the constant process
of separation from historic and current subjugation.
 
i have experienced joy. i have jumped from swings and for a free-falling
second, caught summer in my hands. i have danced at a party with several
friends and held the dancefloor like my personal bedroom jam session.
i have been held close, been told that i am soft, that i am beautiful not
despite of these curves, this skin, love handles and soft tummy, but because
of them. i have touched myself in the shower, not for need of release,
but because i like that i am solid and present, and soft.
 
my hips are blessed because my momma’s hips are blessed. the most stable
and tree-like hips. every time she says something about her weight
i hug her and say she’s the most beautiful woman ever. she is one
of the only reasons i know how to call myself beautiful. 
 
we are the most beautiful houses. the most beautiful oceans. the most beautiful
minerals and gradual crystallization. we are glass and shatter, rock and erosion,
tree and roots, spirit and levitation.
 
i touch every bodypart with a memory, with magic, saltwater.
i will return again and again until the chant is a prayer renewed
and answered in every new layer of cells. 

If we match, message me with what song you would Gone Girl yourself to. Do you like Santigold? Lorde’s new album? Have you ever felt hunted? Or crazy? Have you ever been called crazy? Turn another book/movie adaptation about a woman framing her husband for her own murder into a verb while you’re at it. Does it comfort you? Do you feel something when you picture yourself getting away with running away? I don’t want to tell you about what I’ve gone through. I don’t want to tell you about how I came to be both the loudest and quietest survival tactic. What about Beyoncé? Imagine Gone Girl-ing yourself to a Beyoncé song. Let me know how often you drop the word bitch like a spoon, or a piece of paper. Let me know how often you pick bitch back up off the floor because you are able to. How much do you think a single word is capable of? What do you think your own two hands are capable of? Sorry, I know these aren’t the type of questions you ask when you’re trying to get a date. Let me start over: did you grow up here? What’s your favorite song? Have you ever called yourself a feminist and meant it? Have you ever told a woman in your life that you loved them and meant it?