still here, still bleeding
What her grandmother couldn't name, she came to set free.
i have swallowed
so much silence
i can feel it
calcified
somewhere between my sternum
and my throat
a stone i grew myself
because the world kept putting things in my mouth that weren’t mine to carry
and i
kept swallowing.
—
i know what it is to shrink
to make myself apartment-sized
in a body built cathedral
to laugh at the joke.
to laugh at the joke.
to laugh at the joke.
until my face forgot what it felt like
to mean it
i know what it is
to stand in a room
and calculate –
how loud is too loud
how much is too much
how angry can i be
before i become the problem
that is what i call girl math
i have done it my entire life – and it just doesn’t add up
—
my grandmother didn’t have words for what was done to her.
she just had a body
that flinched.
she just had hands
that couldn’t stop working.
she just had a mouth
that said ‘fine, fine, i’m fine’
while something underneath her ribs beat itself bloody against the bars.
i felt it.
it came down through her blood. that caged thing.
that almost-wild thing.
and i am here,
in this body,
to tell you
i set it free
—