Our Heavenly Bodies
Chiedza Mupita
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“I am afraid to own a Body –
I am afraid to own a Soul –”
—Emily Dickinson
My mother is
A believer
and
She
does not let me
believe in home
funerals or funerals
the body is
six feet closer to hell.
after death
in a barren wasteland
my body should
be close to yours.
But a home:
does not exist yet
just an amalgamation of
images and vessels
that pervade
space.
In all honesty,
everything I touch
breaks
the pieces are
no longer recognizable.
For I am afraid to own
I am afraid to break
superstitious:
in the mystical
obsolete. She
locks the house on Friday the thirteenth;
whistle at night.
She says “onions” three times,
in any manner:
sunken in the ground
The body should be fragmented and exist
touching everything that never belonged to you.
never invade your space or the space of those
a body is just
A home I wish to occupy, even just for a slight
second.
You see my body
for I am
confounding
liminal
if I truly owned a body it would
be fragmented,
slightly
until
on the floor and the image is
a body.
another home.
Chiedza (she/her) is a poet, essayist, and playwright/screenwriter from Johannesburg, South Africa. She draws inspiration from Richard Siken, Mark Doty, FKA Twigs, and many others. She serves as the editor-in-chief for two of her school’s publications and writes for her school’s literary magazine. Outside of writing, she loves films, musical theater, gender studies, and art history.