She/They

I haven't seen myself in a mirror for a while.

There's a deep blue ocean between my self and

this flesh and these bones and sometimes I sit

on a foot until it falls asleep and wait for the

sensation to remind me that I'm alive

not quite associated with this body

but not quite free of it either.

what is this bodily space, it's not my own

today it was a mode of transportation

and it was someone's projections

of sex and intimacy, there was

nothing I had to do about it

could do about it other

than exist in a space.

I've lost the words to the poem, the one that

screams in a voice harsher than that time

my body was my trap played against me

the poem that waxes on about how I

am everyone's reflections but my

own, my identity constructed in

response to curves I didn't

consent into and culture

that's continents away

and the invisibility of

my (un)wellness.

it sneaks up on you, like the night fall of winter or

maybe it lures you in with a song of placement

and explanation for harm like "they just can't

help themselves, so they help themselves to

you" and I just want to know how, how can I

see myself in a mirror, see my self in a

mirror when every time I introduce

myself, anees she her hers it's

merely just a parroting back

of their reflections and

experience of a body

I don't belong to.

want to know what question I want to be asked?

"who are you, truly?" I'm weary of a language

where my introductions invoke shared

experiences of nonconsensual touch

and my name is a whole story not

for you to mispronounce with

extra words or references 

to a spice, I am not a thing

for you to taste, a recipe

you found in a book

and I'm femme as

in my hope, my 

love grounds 

me.

not she her hers as in it's been zero days since a

man touched me in public without my consent and I

spent hours thinking about what to say and how to

say it to define myself a little less by the social 

reflection of smallness and curves that men believe

grants them permission to this physical body.

but queer and femme as in something more solid

than bones remembers a time when it wasn't like

this and yearns for when it's not like this again and

isn't sure if it's around the corner but will keep

quietly whispering poems to my self in the mirror

until this physical body is ashes and dust.