I yearn to find a place to undress in the soil, looking
still, pacing until I am reborn uncomfortably
in the eyes of the moon, hiding away
behind the city lights and robotic buildings. I am from
the spark that feasts on the
gap forming between my mind and my body. Someone you
do not recognize yet can see in jumbled pixels. I know that you’ve
wandered among the static confusion in my eyes, exchanged
me for my girlish baby cheeks. Mistaken me for
a tadpole whose frog legs have yet to develop, the
adhesive feet that stick only to the weatherbeaten mannequin
you see me as. I am untethered still as they
choke on the fantasy of what I wish to be named.
I lose you under the plastic doll clothes you
bind me in. I beg the rainstorm to free me from what I should
do to hurt myself, breasts torn like paper, pulsing for help.
This is not my body telling you to clean
the blood off my exposed organs, wipe up
the saliva in my translucent eyes. But
there is no solitude in this panic, the way you’re
soaping my scarred skin in rosy girlhood, so
soft that it hurts to touch. I catch a glimpse of you, busy
training your vocal chords to speak over me, busy being
the reflection of God whose womb still bleeds, afraid
that I am the straggling piece of the umbilical cord, a test to
the humanity you watched run out of love,
like recycled air, signatures on century old paper, or
ancient fables of the woman I once was, not
the human body I have sheltered in. You’re
examining my fossilized skeleton instead of my brain, missing
the slants and angles of me, missing the
way my hands bend your ignorance into poetry, finding the fun
in the shovels you use to unearth my breathing body. A waste of
the time you could spend clothing
your discomfort in tolerance. So dress yourself
instead of dressing me. For I exist in
the foggy eyes that shed fairy dust on window panes, the
knuckles that punch holes in corruption despite your embarrassment.
I am inside of this paper and peeling at the slivers of
hatred you use to cut me.
We find our balance atop this upside down globe.
Haze is a junior in creative writing at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco. They have work published in several literary publications, including Synchronized Chaos, Blue Marble, The Weight Journal, Teen Ink, and Parallax Journal, and have performed their poetry at the Youth Art Summit in San Francisco and 826 Valencia. When Haze is not writing, they can be spotted cuddling their three cats, holding their python, feeding their tarantula, or rescuing insects from being squashed.
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