Having a body is like dragging around a huge purse, one of those satchel-sized leather behemoths that holds everything you could possibly need: wallet, change purse, sunglasses, pen, lip balm, clear stream to sit beside, existential crisis, your dead relatives’ voices, doggie poop bags. It’s all in there but you have to root around for your keys, and while you’re pawing through you find other things you forgot you were carrying: envelope with a friend’s address on it, white-flecked rock you picked up because it was shaped like a heart. The thing is fucking heavy, and for some of us it just gets heavier, and then we discover we can’t run with it, the corners are soggy with pain, old to-do lists spill from the top. The body begins to tear, duct tape doesn’t help, it’s a struggle to keep everything where it’s supposed to be. Suddenly your crackling knees insist I am you and your mind says Fuck off but then you remember you’re actually inside the ginormous purse and oh-my-god there’s the bike you rode at fourteen, hot wind in your face, the turquoise ring you can no longer wear on your swollen fingers, and at the very bottom a weedy path you know you have to walk—you want to walk—if you can just get it together, chivvy yourself out of your chair, not always hopeful but alive, still alive.
Katherine Riegel is the author of Love Songs from the End of the World, the chapbook Letters to Colin Firth, and two more books of poetry. Her work has appeared in Brevity, The Gettysburg Review, The Offing, One, Poets.org, and elsewhere. She is co-founder and managing editor of Sweet Lit, and teaches independent online classes in poetry and creative nonfiction. Find her at katherineriegel.com.
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I love this -- and feel this -- so hard. Thank you, Katherine.
Excellent use of metaphor. Wonderful poem!