“...her birth broke something. It inserted something, like when you start to hate yourself or when you lose something.” 

Degrading your mother’s body 

Opening her wounds every day that you exist 

A hip pops out of place every time she goes to tie a shoelace 

Her body seems lopsided for the weight of four children she rested on one hip

Over the stove, it melted into a clay sculpture, memorializing some recipe for “tough love” 

A return to shelter. Duck and cover 

I play dead and roll over 

I hold my own hand 

I was not taught to hide behind a barrier 

I simply fell to the ground 

“Why would a person get naked for a person with whom you do not share culture? (Ban)”

Who do I even share culture with? Who am I supposed to take to bed other than fragments of myself?

“Feral moments so valuable you never share them with anyone else.” 

“Nobody came to look for them, and they themselves could not recall being parented or even what lay beyond that field.” 

“Some bodies don’t somatize.” 

Somatize - to manifest (psychological distress) through physical symptoms 

Sensation is not what you impart to me. 

A feeling of suffocation 

You desire intensity[intimacy] 

You rasp something visible like a colander 

Launch it at my head 

I surrender my scalp 

I tear at my baby hairs 

The process is not one I can articulate, it comes pouring out of my mouth. 

It knows more than I do 

I can’t intellectualize the way I form things of the body. 

I don’t accept that of what has been placed on my tongue. 

I get on my knees and beg

And plead to pierce my ears. 

You attempt to live devoid of brutality. 

So you have subjected yourself to someone who sees you as lesser than. 

I cry for you, mama 

And one day, it uncurled in my brain… 

The breadth of her sacrifice, 

And as I have come to understand some semblance of intention, I still can’t help but scream into dense air, asking 

WAS IT WORTH IT 

Was it worth it, Mama? 

[to create a thing that continues to hate you] 

To birth something unrecognizable