‘Mountains’

Photographer Najib Joe Hakim

Mountains 

I do not want to spend half my life

learning how to be gentle with myself 

I am shackled by fitted sheets

elastic corners snapping back

like they know something I don’t 

My socks never fit 

my nails revolt, 

soft, splitting, reshaping 

And I am always 

in some kind of pain 

on Valentine’s Day 

I show you my surgical scars 

trace the ridges at my throat 

where the body tried 

to close itself 

I ask if they bother you 

I open anyway 

offer the incision 

like a language 

because I do not know 

How to love 

without evidence 

My love is not clean 

it gathers 

dust, heat, sweat 

my sheets, 

creased ecosystems 

small fault lines 

breaking across the bed

I sleep beneath weight 

on purpose 

mountains pressed to my chest

so I can remember 

how to breathe 

I am a mountain 

You are the wind 

I call every valley 

a wound 

You call it distance 

your independence, 

a blade I keep honing 

against myself 

you move 

I erode 

still, 

I let you carry me 

like something already gone 

i am a mountain 

You are the wind 

tell me, 

Do mountains fear the wind

or do they only notice 

once they are smaller 

Once they are 

almost nothing 

When I collapse 

When I am gravel, 

dust, 

memory,

Will you gather me 

or is breaking 

the only way 

the world knows how to hold us

If the world is made to break

Then here I rest, 

my fists, unclosed 

aching for softness 

I am still here 

I am still here 

I am still 

going

Bella Melardi is a poet and author. She writes about the political and personal. She attends OCADU.