belong

a poem.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of belonging and the narratives we craft or adopt to be accepted.

Over the years, one of the biggest breakthroughs for me was realizing that if I didn’t belong to myself first, everything else would just be an exercise in fitting in.

And we were made for so much more than that.

belong

my body was not my own.

it belonged to scalpels 
     and surgical clamps,
to nurses and needles.
to green robes and gloves,
to the theater lights,
to the darkness 
    swallowing 
    everything 
    whole.

it belonged to the men
who poked and prodded
and penetrated without
my consent.

it belonged to
the ravings
and cravings 
of the ones
who protected the fire
in their glass...

the drunk and disorderly
who wrapped
their identities around
    mine and squeezed,
    until I suffocated and
    succumbed.

it belonged to exam rooms,
to drug cocktails and
fever dreams.

my body was not my own.

it belonged to years filled
with 500-calorie days
applauded for their discipline.

it belonged to words from the sky
and the men at my side.

it belonged to leaders and
    long nights,
to holy callings,
to stages and villages
    and the notches 
    in miracle workers’ 
    belts.

my body was not my own.

it deserved to be denied,
pushed aside,
ignored, forgotten,
drug behind, 
silenced, othered,
and gaslit 
when it refused
to comply.

it belonged to isolation and
those who banned
    their own 
    inconvenience 
    because
if they died, no big deal—
they knew where they were going.

2.5 years living inside
a six-foot-thick walled
cocoon, my dna
rearranged.

then came the loss and the rage
    and the pain,
where i felt every searing inch
of my skin and
i had to learn to breathe 
all over again...

to welcome my cells home.

if my mitochondria
did not belong to me,
it would never belong at all.

— D. Michele Perry