local_library I Can’t Talk About My Body Today

by Jessica Cordes

Published in Issue No. 292 ~ September, 2021

Please don’t

 

make me,

I’m tired

 

I understand:

We are

 

girls.

Born to dream

 

we are anyone else

but Barbie

 

doesn’t breathe

don’t you see

 

we are the weeds

wishing to trees

 

so big they brush

the sky.

 

And yes,

I squeezed

 

my face clean, squirted

the spotted mirror

 

last night.

Slept

 

pus-stained,

soaked pillow

 

woke up alive.

 

Don’t tell me

about your belly,

 

I am heavy.

Healing is not

 

a meeting

it is a full-time job

 

When the new

boy told me

 

he loved my body,

I heard him loving

 

some part of me,

and I made it enough.

 

I went out without

makeup today

 

rubbed my

eyes,

 

raised

my hand,

 

flirted, crawled

to sleep

 

You tell me

we all want

 

what we do not have

and for once

 

I agree:

peace

account_box More About

Jessica is an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama, and is an assistant poetry editor at New York Quarterly magazine. She was born and raised in Newburgh, New York, and recently moved to Tuscaloosa for school. In her free time, she enjoys doing yoga and weightlifting, cooking new foods, and reading outside in the sun.