Inhabiting my Skin | NaPoWriMo Day 19

Artwork by Adrien Mérigeau

       My body
does not feel
like      home
today.

I fumble
    at the door
    with the wrong keys,
    so I have to jump over the gate
    and break down
    the back door.

Like a thief
in my own    house

    The inside
    has been redecorated,
    the furniture rearranged,
    so every time I walk into a room
I trip.

    Even the cutlery
    has been moved
    to the wrong cupboards
    so everytime I open one
when I need something
I am lost.

    I've forgotten
    which switches
    turn on
    which lights,
    so I put them all on only to find
the electricity is gone.

If I have to
live here again
    I have to relearn
my anatomy
    like architecture;
reconstruct my bones
    with a building plan;
rewire my veins
    so I do not have to live in darkness;
rediscover.
    what it feels like to
inhabit my skin.

---

About this Poem

People generally assume that if you're a dancer, or anyone working with your body really, that you have a good sense of how it works, that it's in your control, that you know how to move it how you want it to, or that you have a mostly loving relationship with your body.
Some days, this is true, but of late I've been struggling with my body. I'm a Bharatanatyam dancer and I have hyperextended limbs which means when I stretch out my hands, my elbows practically bend into obtuse angles (facing downward). It's extra effort to keep it in a straight line and then make sure my wrists don't bend in. I also have back issues which make my left hamstring get caught sometimes and some movements are difficult to do on the left, but it needs to be balanced out. And sometimes, it is like my body does what it wants to and I don't even know what it's doing to have control over it. The other day, in dance class, my teacher was correcting a step and she said I was doing the right thing, but my head and hands were disconnected, moving unrelated to each other.
It really struck a chord in me because I felt disconnected from my body, like I've had to work around it rather than with it, considering all the things that have been coming up. And as a dancer, or someone engaging with their body constantly, this is a really tough thing to feel, like your home is not yours anymore.

---

Form

The spacing works to create a sense of distance. Everything about my body is on the right column, and everything I'm feeling now is on the left. So even though words share the same lines, they are still distant. The alignment is also a bit all over the place, to bring out the lack of alignment in my own body, how some things just don't fit or seem off. The words on the left also read on their own, reflecting where I'm at now and what it feels like to not be connected to my skin home - I fumble, I trip, when I need something I am lost, the electricity is gone.

Towards the end, when the poem talks about the re-inhabitation of this house, the distance narrows and spacing overlaps; the parts that are mine move to the left (the lines that talk about where I am at now) almost, but not yet, reclaiming my body - my anatomy, my bones, my veins, my skin. My house.

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thanks for reading!