My Body is a Monument

his violence is a red thing punching

marks onto the text

of my body - a bruise

burgundy blooms against the gentle cage

my ribs make. my nose breaks

i swallow my own insides. veinstuff tastes

of metal. rust

the colour of blood when mixed

with water

i wash it from my face

crimson stark against the porcelain

i think

my body is a crime scene

i scrub at the bruise to dissolve it

like water is a solvent

like my burgundy skin is just

painted on

my body is a foreign body lodged in my throat

i cough myself into the sink and i mix me with blood and i flood me with water

his violence is a blood red thing

redacting me from the text

of my own

body

i look in the mirror and realise i’m inside it

i look out through the glass at that tired flesh thing

of myself

i feel responsible

like my body already held in its cells a blueprint:

the story of fists colliding with the softness of my own

selfhood

my body is my fault

i am the fault of my body

i try to replace the violence with violence

my arms are etched with scars of my own

making

purple pink white lines

i open myself up

to let myself out

making sense of memories flushed with red

bruised ribs

blood noses

a body that knows threat like an old friend

a body wound tightly around the possibility

of danger

then

i find a yellow dress

dense cotton oozing yolky joy

it feels artefactual

a thing before violence was written on my body

i climb out of the mirror

douse myself in yellow

smell flowers til i’m dizzy

pollenated

i touch the scars on my arms

read them like braille with the tips of my fingers

find the shapes of my own

survival

i write myself back into the story of my body

i pat rouge into the softness of my cheeks

treat my scars like they are fontanelles – soft spots

delicate and careful

i am the opposite of violence

i grow lillies in the holes it left behind

i stretch my body long when i go swimming in the cold

bluelipped, red blooded creature

a thing that lived

and i wear a yellow dress

diaphanous – buoyed by the wind and my own

gentle

bravery

my body was a crime scene

red tape and redactions

now it is a monument draped in yellow

i pray to her for the salve forgiveness

i mix it with warm milk

and i feed it to myself