My body as a conversation starter
On some days, my body
feels like a stranger. I sit
in the front seat of a car
six hours into a road trip
with a foreign destination.
On some days, my body
feels like an ocean that
I struggle to tame.
A wild animal I carried home
in hopes I could domesticate it.
On some days,
I tell people I have cellulite.
On some days, when my neck
hangs heavy and my fingers ache
a bit more than usual, I let people
guess at the words that have made
a home out of my skin. On some days,
my body becomes a teaching moment
of what can happen if one falls
into a bear trap. My body is a bridge
designed by world renowned architects,
built by profound engineers;
structurally sound so one can safely
transition the conversation into
how fast I let myself go. As if I wasn’t
already grasping onto the railing so hard
my hands became permanently calloused.
On some days, my body reminds
people of what I once was
before I looked death into its eyes
as it taught me how to dance.
On some days, my body is a
cemetery for my mother to grieve over
my life that has not yet ended.
On some days, my body is a
battleground for a war
that has plagued my body
long before I took my first breath.
On some days, my body is the one
that got away. It could have been you
that plummeted to your death off
the Golden Gate. On some days, I am
reminded why we no longer take family
vacations to San Francisco. And on all
the other days, I see my reflection and all the
fractures that belong to me. I look at
myself as an oil painting;
craquelure is the word
for all the hairline fractures in the world’s
most valued pieces of art.
Author’s Bio
Mary Kelly is a creative writing student that has taken on writing poetry as a way to air all the things that she feels she cannot say. Her poetry has previously appeared in 22 under 22, and the 2018 New Zealand Poetry Year Book. She currently resides in so-called Vancouver, Coast Salish Territory.
