This is how I learned the permanence of my own body:
When my uncle inherited his tumor and swayed under the weight
of knowing he could pass it down to his children
like mouths learn to love the hand that feeds them,
his wife tied a string of dinner spoons over the front hall mirror
and omitted every knife and fork to remind him of how sometimes,
the very things we fear the most are not the sharpest or most lethal,
but the ones we can see our reflections in.
When the x-ray was returned outlining all the small islands of gray matter
where the tumor had spread, she made sure he understood that nowhere
on the transparent material could he see his own face looking back at him.
This is how I learned the permanence of my own body:
I finally understood when my waist sprouted hips like cactus flowers
that growing pains are the sweetest kind of pain there is,
because it hurts to change, but it makes it a thousand times easier
to see over the heads of the ones who let us down.
That tattoos mean not only inking skin, but sinking in
to the very places we always knew were reserved especially for us.
And this is how I learned the permanence of my own body:
I recognized parts of it in others-
in the crane that’s always reaching toward the sky,
in the moth that can’t help but burn itself against the light,
in the woman who would rather read Braille than text
because she can feel the words better than she can see them.
And this is how I learned that my body is permanent and should never be self-erased:
because my uncle would rather spare his wife the pain of seeing him ache from chemo
than undergo it and live as someone changed,
because all my tattoos are nonexistent so far but that doesn’t mean
I can’t already feel them under my skin,
and because each and every single part of me
has fallen in love with each and every single part of someone else.
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The Permanence of the Body
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