A transformation from prose to a poem, just like from ignorance to realization
My body doesn’t belong to me…
It belongs to the guy that asked me for a dance in a club and pressed his hands on my waist and my ribs too hard to be considered a passionately gentle dance movement. The touches of whom hurt for days and made me feel like a captured dove.
My body belongs to my parents, who anxiously open or close the windows or the curtains in my room, resenting its unfitness with the time of the day or the weather outside. Resenting the same way, they scold me with “That’s too short,” “It’s not August already,” worried about my own detachment from reality, but doing that out of love.
It belongs to the little boy from my kindergarten, whose name I’d remember till my last day because for months, he thought he was showing his sympathy towards me by pulling and pinching my tender cheeks too harshly to be considered cute childish mischief. Because of this, waking up every morning, I see the reflection of dilated blood vessels beside my lips, manifesting themselves with scornful purple lightning flashes whenever I tighten my jaw muscles.
My body belongs to the photographers and their zealous attempts to persuade me to shoot nude for them. That, through the distorted lens of their cameras, see me as an unattainable muse for themselves and as an exotic type of visual feed for their viewers.
My body’s not mine; it is owned by strangers. Their devouring gazes and gossips in a whisper. That narrows me down to pictures and measurement numbers they look for with their limited vision.
It’s possessed by the memories of my past, the traces I left in the world’s lasting sandbox by failing to enliven the things I created. To the dreams of my future and my horrid fears to end up being sentenced to silent oblivion.
It doesn’t belong to me; it belongs to my friends. The friends that value me as a person but also see me from the perspective of how they are viewed around me from the side.
It belongs to the country where I happened to be born. And now I have to bear the shackles of patriotism, fake history, fake culture, and the cross in my mind.
My body belongs to the system, indeed. To that cruel, egocentric processor of meat.
That predestines my career, my husband. The car I would drive. And other things for which I will need to strive.
My body is not mine. I tried to steal it a number of times
but failed to lift it from the well full of lies.
It belongs to life’s wind, to its orders and mercy.Â
And what’s left for me… is to give up and curse it.
