My body is not a garden.
I have no pretty rows for you to stick your flowers,
No neat thorns for you to pick your teeth clean.
What you plant comes up rotting
In my throat and
I spit out bile. My reflection gulps it down.
The toilet smells like you, the soil smells like you.
Pack up my bags, drive me home from the hospital.
My body is not a garden,
No soft earth left for you to tend.
I’ve slashed and burned myself
and started new.
I sharpened my teeth to
Bite your cold hands
that grabbed me in your freezing rage.
Your frost spread to my veins, and now
My body is a tundra,
hard and unrelenting,
endless. Beneath the ice
Life stirs, wild flora
Foreign to your mind.
You told me to imagine your voice gentler than it is. Did you not know that’s what I’ve done since I was three years old?
My body is not your garden.
I plant my own seeds now.
I clean my own teeth now.
I kiss my own wrists now.
I pack up my bags, drive west.
Spring is here. Moss starts to bloom.
