Day 656: to rita dove and chinaka hodge

Moving Target

‘My body, on the day I learned to remember became a labyrinth of secrets’
-Chinaka Hodge

We spent our youth
Assuming a loaded barrel
Even when it wasn’t
Bent over backwards to keep our hearts off the trigger
Between breaths
Pounded our bodies into small spaces where promise are held
Counted in secrets

1.
they day my mother promised me womanhood
was the day I found
my body was meant to be a temple
but now was only barren
only pillars of stories that never stuck
scars where hips should have been
beauty
is the lie our mothers told to us in fairytales
before we scrubbed truth from our scalp raw


2.
I was 6 when I realize my mother was an American
And I
Was Oceania
Brown skinned
Nothing about this body sparkled in the sunlight
I am citrus bronze
Sunset on sand stained skin
Nothing about this body
Resembles her
Or the promises she made to me

3.
promises are made to be forgotten
secrets
to be broken
our bond
was a perfect penmanship
and personalized stationary
the things that kept us quiet
unaware that this silence
was the breathe under the trigger
the space stuffed full
in the barrel

we spent out youth
wishing to stop growth it its tracks
we found our mothers
pushed in small cylinders
waiting to be pulled
but we never had the heart
to free them
to squeeze the trigger