CW: Body issues
I worry which body part will defy me,
turn up bruised and sullen to remind me
of my troublesome ilk.
My great-grandmother ignored her lump until it was black.
Until it was an open wound that made itself known. A lifetime
of salt-rimmed secrets floating to the surface.
Or maybe she didn’t like to be touched.
I remain a bag of skin, tolerable and brilliant. If you look directly at the sun you risk blindness;
if you look directly at a problem you risk solving it. If my breasts were identifiable
then I would know what they look like. I would embrace them, set out an offering,
travel their ridges with my nail-bitten hands.
My great-grandmother had a daughter who became my mother’s mother.
She was beautiful and sad like the memory of youth. Her cervix killed her.
I move gently, so as not to feel an answer.
Lauren Ebright is a writer living and forgetting to breathe in the Pacific Northwest. Her poetry has appeared in Permafrost and Anti-Heroin Chic, among others. Follow her procrastination on Twitter @lauren_ebright.