Our Bodies, Our Selves: For the Daughters of Eve [a poem]

Our Bodies, Our Selves: For the Daughters of Eve

This one’s bowels scream, “Stop telling me I’m broken!”
While another’s heart says, “I do not feel safe here inside this hummingbird chest.”

This one’s got her fist in her throat
Where his was
Coming up and out with the windpipe
Playing that slender flute for the first time in a long time

She’s pulled the voicebox, too
Her sister opens it, turns the tiny rusted crank
We hear the pink ballerina of her tongue dancing free

Listening to this, to the wail song, to the conjugated sob
We un-lay bricks from another one’s shoulders
And watch as her wing spread spans so many stories

This one doesn’t tolerate stitches, so, fingers woven
We suture her incision with the needle of not-knowing and
String made from our own guts

This one lays her hands where that one’s son once nested
Before he swept out and into a current he couldn’t control
She pulls the red thread that says
“Don’t hold it in, or it will break you.”

Alice really went through it, didn’t she?
The glass, I mean.
But she gave us the shards and the splinters for
diamond rings, sweet tokens.

Such shiny things. We are not broken.