paid all the fees and brought it home
bought every piece back from anyone who thought they owned any of it
pried every limb from everyone I thought was entitled to it
today I called my body mine and meant it
spoke buoyancy back into my bones
floated towards a past due reclamation
today I nourished it
fed it things other than sorrow
rubbed it down in shea butter and cetaphil
touched it everywhere
traced my clit with my own fingers
tasted my juicy eminence
screamed my own name
called this pussy this pleasure
mine
thanked myself for the explosion
today I watch my smile flourish into an unforgiving forest
watch a tree sprout from my tonsils
remind myself that I can still
make life can still be alive
today my skin knows nothing of knives or razors
it still splits open but to grow my body into a house
I called my body home
for the first time in a long time I had somewhere to sleep
today I am not what happened to me
my body is not a victim or survivor
not a coffin cadaver or testimony
today my body blooms from its own ashes
I do not spring into a field of flowers
my body unties itself collapses into a calm river
dances up and down stream before it turns into an ocean
it’s understood between my body and I
not every day will be today
some days the scars will blister their way back to surface
most days being a body will be nothing to proclaim and everything to mourn
but today my body is a celebratory thing
I rename it comforting things
honey and homie and safe
TIANNA BRATCHER is a very Queer, Black Dominican woman, sister, and auntie originally from Anchorage, Alaska now residing in Oakland, California. She was a 2018 fellow at The Watering Hole. As a slam poet she has competed at NPS 2017-2018, CUPSI 2013-2016 and Brave New Voices 2014. She was a Queer Emerging Artist Resident at Destiny ARTS, 2017. Tianna uses her art to dismantle silence, interrupt cycles of abuse and trauma and to create healing processes.