otê

strawberries in my mouth. i’m trying to fix it.

my heart-center wasn’t ripe yet —

i used to resent the way it drummed against my chest, remembering the thick salt on my tongue when i couldn’t get the sound out of my ears, reverberating in the strangest places. my nose, my cheeks, my neck. that’s the elastic being too taut, that’s the young muscle not knowing how to act right.

my heart-center is blown out now like mush, all water and no sugar, people biting into raw spoilt.

couldn’t tell you which is worse. fresh and acrid or putrid and soft.

saturn’s around here. saturn on my neck, on my finger, where i want to plant him, i’m trying to be reverent. i have some reverence in me, some room for him, too.

he is my bones and skin. bones i once broke down my leg had fantastic gaps that didn’t mend well, melded only after years of no-tending-to attitude, still ache when water visits in clouds and cold banshee winds. my teeth have holes, too, a wicked curse born by complacency, my skin… fragile. abundant. used to it.

my heart, that is the sun, that is the strawberry on a hot hot day

melting a little/perishing a little

growing feeding giving life burning over here in my chest.

that is my heart, the sun, expanding and supernova

in the quiet meek universe

where there is no such thing as too much, only silence and survive and alive.

and my heart is surrounded by bone, tender ribs that have long since sunk under and around, my sun is closer to saturn than one would ever guess. saturn on my necklace, my throat, blocking out a strawberry farm for my thirties.

saturn digging up under that ribcage, medicine looking, million seeded otêhimina.

from the land, my earth body flesh. the humility of physicality. star body spirit. the joy of observation and living.