It knows when you intend
to starve it, keep it from what
it needs, persuade it into danger,
when you expose it to pain,
when you’re ashamed.
It knows when you say
you love it but you mean I wish
I didn’t have a body, or at least
this body, when you grieve
its slow erosions and defeats
but fail to celebrate its power.
It knows when you feel trapped
inside the loneliness of skin
although it’s permeable,
when you insist you’re more
than this tangle of cells
and salt and flesh
as if that wasn’t miracle enough.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 28, Issue 3.
Harriet Brown’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Indiana Poetry Review, and many other journals. Her poetry chapbook, The Promised Land, was published by Parallel Press. Her nonfiction appears in the New York Times, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She teaches Magazine, News, and Digital Journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
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