Our Body Restless
by Makensi Ceriani
Trash and leaves litter the driveway, each car a lone body
waiting to be used. Each crushed milk jug or can a prone body
nobody has time to move. My sisters and I glare from the windows
of the house to ward off visitors; swear at the overgrown body
of weeds, a stand-in for the family we can never cut.
Not one of us wants what we have here. Each of us a home body
who can’t bear to make ourselves leave. My mom buys a new
used car as a promise, a small way to escape her own body
when she thinks of all that has gone to seed here. She can’t stand
the cracked walkway, the water-stained wood, the broken phone or body
of bills. She paints the kitchen different shades of blue each time
the cat brings home a dead bird, little fallen, hollow-boned body—
she can’t stand that loss of wing. My sisters and I take turns
at playing too rough and bloody, always some thrown body
crying in the hallway until mom comes home. It could take hours,
but we needed her to know we needed her. One sewn body
aching to be stitched back up over again. Unwillingly,
she teaches each of us how to drive, to survive in a chrome body
that would take us far from her. I remember a picture of my mother
when she was young, how the light burnt around her body. Shone.
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