(Where) My Body Did Not End
after Loose Strife by Quan Berry
Draw a map with no beginning
you were not born but plucked
from tree vast and placeless
mark the spot in your mother’s garden
( ) you broke water, took root
Draw a timeline with the texture of your hair
knot the habits that link you to your mother
—a hand on hip a pan scrubbed clean a nail bitten bloody—
take note; these are your loudest inheritances
see how the generations loosen you thread by aching thread
Draw a chart of all the places ( ) you met grief
the house on Greenwood, shutters to match the street
take note; your preemptive nostalgia for a place still standing
the Atlantic Ocean before you turned 17
take note; this thought cannot remain sweet, your mind’s current pulls to
the house on Ventnor before cancer
take note; how mourning felt too easy then; predisposed, habitual
the guilt you have for what survived through you
take note; the poetry in sitting shiva for all the death you didn’t live
Draw a map with no beginning
you were not born
your mother gave you a dead woman’s name and whatever she left clung to it
your grandmother gave you a twisted timeline, a map the decades coiled
your great grandmother sings in a voice thorny from all she’s forgotten
—a shofar sounds a temple is desecrated a people spiral—
you wake and for a moment don’t know ( ) you are
ears still ringing.
A recording of the author reading “(Where) My Body Did Not End”:
Nesha Ruther is a poet hailing from Takoma Park, Maryland. She was a member of the 2015 DC Youth Slam Team and a 2016 YoungArts winner in spoken word. She currently attends the University of Wisconsin Madison as part of the tenth cohort of First Wave.
Featured image credit: Pixabay.com/pasja1000.
