Victoria Cadostin
New York City, New York, USA
This body, it carries
a light
expansive and regal
it carries,
a spirit that does not yet trust in its
divinity
-
This body,
that knows no internal cues,
knows not when to eat
knows not when it’s full,
it carries
a hungerrrr inherited from her mother’s
good going-out bustier and the way she’d hold her breath the whole night, frozen
in the shape of “woman”
-
This body, it carries
a nose ring her father wept blood for
called her a whore for
forgot what daughter was, for
This body
did not belong to him
-
This body, it carries
nails cut short
for the pleasure of her lovers
for the way skin to skin feels holy,
feels like Religion,
feels like Prayer
-
This body, it carries
hands that do no hold on too tight
that know when to let go, know
when to relinquish elbows, return to the hips and
shut the door behind her
-
This body, it carries
coarse, dark hair home-dyed violet that
never could listen to the rhythm of a comb but
will do its own dance
pink and pretty like cotton candy in the wind,
more free than the ties that bind her feet
to a country that
is not her own and
does not want her
-
This body, it carries
a nose for caribbean spices,
for her grandmother’s cooking
and the way nothing will ever taste as good as the way di ri and sauce pwa and legume tastes when it’s hand-mixed by pudgy, time-worn fingers and scooped up to
awaiting lips
-
This body, it carries
recipes written in the skin
never documented anywhere but her mother’s kitchen, passed down like memories
served in a bowl
-
This body, it carries
a lonnnnging in the branches,
arms
that will always reach for home
-
This body, it carries
a heart that used to shrink to
fit
in other people’s palms
and pockets,
it carries
organs that know how to shapeshift
into daughter
and best friend
and student
and
and
and
-
This body, it carries
tired bones,
lungs
that need practice breathing easy
feet
that are learning to be still
shoulders,
newly introduced to rest
-
This body, it carries
a girl desperate to be held by hands other than her own
-
This body, it carries
a woman learning to be enough.
voicesandvisionsjournal.com 