the brown girl reckons with her untolds
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about the time he said everything about you was easy. how nothing required any extra work. he raped you & even that was simple for him. so ordinary to woman you at sixteen. you wrote love poems to him for a year after. you did not have a word for what happened to you. shaved your head. again. filled an entire journal with different versions of the same sentence about an empty city. the pain was its own kingdom. you proverbed into a child. couldn’t go a week without your mother. you could not forgive her. could not forget what your many mothers could not tell you. cursed your ruin for not being obvious enough. renounced language for not allowing you to document such remarkable sadness. you taught your blood to speculate & then: a good, sturdy love. you are in love with a man & his desperate need to be loved. you are a desperate love. a relentless heart. your love is lightning that way — needs a body through which it can meet the earth. lick the soil. hurt on its way in. yes. this is the whole truth. so help you god. |
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by Amaris Diaz
Amaris Diaz is a poet from San Antonio, Texas. She was a member of Austin’s 2013 Theyspeak Youth Slam team that competed at Brave New Voices. She has a B.A. in Creative Writing from Texas State University in San Marcos. Her poetry has been published by The Paris American, The Thing Itself Journal, and by Button Poetry on Youtube. She currently resides in Austin, Texas. She stays in awe of strong women of color around her, of her perfect & worthy queer family, of all of the living left to do.