Dirt Body

I took this body
grown from dirt—
skin the colour of earth,
eyes and hair the shade of rich, turned soil.
I covered myself in tattoos,
made myself a grotesque cathedral.
Lines of ink:
a single water lily
that only blooms in mud and darkness.
I was built from the desperation
of a dirt eater.
Once, as a toddler, thirsty,
my father refused to buy a drink.
He filled my bottle
with singleserve creamers
lifted from a coffee shop,
one shitty packet at a time.
My mother watched,
full red lips at rest,
so I could grow into a translator
of her unspoken anger.
Hunger made me brilliant—
a hunter with a sharpened tongue
packed with bitter soil,
flicking expiredcream spittle
when crossed.
I survived out of spite.
And spite grows leaves
that refuse the pruning shears,
green with the violence of revolution.
I love my children with the refusal
of a dismembered parent
dragging herself forward,
amputated parts buried underground.
My children are my forgiveness.


Swamp People

The oak is splintering,
dry wood furred with rot.
It cannot hold—
buckling under its own weight,
eating itself from within.
I disappear into the swamp.
My bones thin into reeds.
When I speak, frogs lift from my tongue
one by one,
onto lily pads that won’t bear weight.
Explaining costs more
than stuffing my ears with cattails.
Soaked in the brine of middle age,
love keeps part of me ashore—
hope, duty:
dust. dry land.
Below, the ground shifts.
We move along the bottom,
wading through bodies,
through the brittle shells
of lives women learned to shed.
I notice others here—
fluent in broken sounds,
recognizable by what gives way.
We tunnel downward,
feeling for something solid
with bare hands.
When we find it,
the pressure changes.
Our fingers ache.
Something loosens.
The ground answers.
Mouths open.
Limbs quicken.
The water
is already moving.