‘What My Body Tells Me About Home’ a Poem

I forgot how to be woman. 

Ten whole years it took me  

to stop rinsing the trauma from my hair, 

to stop shaving the tombstones that grow over my skin, 

to stop wearing cremation smoke as my signature scent. 

My clothing drawers pile up like ghettos, 

smelling of isolation. 

I don’t think I could’ve survived  

something as precarious as woman,  

let alone Black. 

I may have walked into this body a woman, 

but I am walking out if it a war, 

and you can just about tell  

by the protest riots of my eyes,  

the rally of my hair,  

the live ammunition between my thighs. 

I lay all my victories over the dressing table and single out 

the unrefined rage, the rough tenderness, the worn history. 

Without these, woman would stop making sense. 

I am a woman of colour. 

All shades wash out against my skin. 

I am the daughter of two refugees. 

I was born at the intersection of violence with fear. 

The only home I’ve had was my body, 

and even that hasn’t always felt like my own. 

For so long, I couldn’t understand  

how touching your own skin  

could feel like bumping into strangers, 

like breaking into someone else’s home. 

To understand loss, you must start your day 

by shovelling casualties out of your skin at 6.45 

and run off to make coffee at 7.00. 

To understand despair, you must listen to your heart 

like a prayer that will never be answered. 

To understand strength, you must learn to be this much woman, 

this much Black, 

this much angry, angry, angry, 

and this much beautiful that’ll always owe it to all the ugly  

it’s come from.  

And now, as I’m counting the wars on my skin,  

I reach out for the mirror and blush:  

“How did this body out measure the breadth of tragedy?” 

Easy.  

Woman. That’s how.