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Upside Down Globe -- poetry by Haze

I yearn to find a place to undress in the soil, looking

still, pacing until I am reborn uncomfortably

in the eyes of the moon, hiding away

behind the city lights and robotic buildings. I am from

the spark that feasts on the

gap forming between my mind and my body. Someone you

do not recognize yet can see in jumbled pixels. I know that you’ve

wandered among the static confusion in my eyes, exchanged

me for my girlish baby cheeks. Mistaken me for

a tadpole whose frog legs have yet to develop, the

adhesive feet that stick only to the weatherbeaten mannequin

you see me as. I am untethered still as they

choke on the fantasy of what I wish to be named.

I lose you under the plastic doll clothes you

bind me in. I beg the rainstorm to free me from what I should

do to hurt myself, breasts torn like paper, pulsing for help.

This is not my body telling you to clean

the blood off my exposed organs, wipe up

the saliva in my translucent eyes. But

there is no solitude in this panic, the way you’re

soaping my scarred skin in rosy girlhood, so

soft that it hurts to touch. I catch a glimpse of you, busy

training your vocal chords to speak over me, busy being

the reflection of God whose womb still bleeds, afraid

that I am the straggling piece of the umbilical cord, a test to

the humanity you watched run out of love,

like recycled air, signatures on century old paper, or

ancient fables of the woman I once was, not

the human body I have sheltered in. You’re

examining my fossilized skeleton instead of my brain, missing

the slants and angles of me, missing the

way my hands bend your ignorance into poetry, finding the fun

in the shovels you use to unearth my breathing body. A waste of

the time you could spend clothing

your discomfort in tolerance. So dress yourself

instead of dressing me. For I exist in

the foggy eyes that shed fairy dust on window panes, the

knuckles that punch holes in corruption despite your embarrassment.

I am inside of this paper and peeling at the slivers of

hatred you use to cut me.

We find our balance atop this upside down globe.



 

Haze is a junior in creative writing at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco. They have work published in several literary publications, including Synchronized Chaos, Blue Marble, The Weight Journal, Teen Ink, and Parallax Journal, and have performed their poetry at the Youth Art Summit in San Francisco and 826 Valencia. When Haze is not writing, they can be spotted cuddling their three cats, holding their python, feeding their tarantula, or rescuing insects from being squashed.

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