THE NAMELESS MUSEUM (2019)

11. the study of a young woman

i'm pretty in an ugly kind of way.

i weave strands of sentences and words

between the dark thin folds of my hair,

the truths worn like pools of light

shining inside the irises of my muddy eyes.

the colours and tendrils of poetry

sink into the pores of my patchy skin,

roughened on the back, smoother on the front,

and as i breathe, it reforms and remakes itself

so that i'm always a reflection of my mind.

punctuations shape themselves on my cheeks

and on the veins of my hands and forearms,

my ankles and feet.

they tell people the rise and fall of my emotions,

the rush and stillness of my blood.

my crooked body is shaped by the figure

of language

so that every way i move, every gesture and flick of the hand

speaks to the gesture and language of yours.

and in every move, the image of my face, the paper of my skin,

the inkiness of my blood and the quill of my bones –

they tell me to love myself – for words are beautiful deadly things,

and i live in its abundance.