Painting by Alex Gardner

I am the place in which something has occurred

I am a body
Of strings and clumps of cells
Piloted by a mind
Seeking direction
I am the cheeks, once stained pink at your touch
And the eyes
Pierced with a soul that you called beautiful.
I am the hair that you compared to honey
and the hands small against yours
and the forearms that you tested between your fingers
to determine whether I was more than imagined.

But I am not your favorite character
To be loved, a fascination
then placed back on the shelf
until the next adventure

I am the hero of a story
that you didn’t carve
and this body
has lived
Even when you have misplaced it

Because these cheeks
turn pink when I laugh
At a joke you didn’t make
And these eyes shine
like the ocean before the rain
but not the one you showed me; it’s my own
And this hair
has been twisted
and chopped
and torn far longer than you have admired it
And these hands
are meant to twirl pencils
and someday hold a hand that isn’t yours
And these lips
are untested and untraced
parted with words that you haven’t heard
and smiles that aren’t for you to see

Because this mind
is something you occupied
but not something you owned
and sometimes I miss
you
until I realize
that I have me.
A body lived in
and loved
and the site of befores and afters

So when you think you know
my hands
and the eyes that you told me were like photographs of your happiest place
know they
exist
far from what you do and do not know.
They are among the stretch marks on my hips that you will never see
and the untinted skin on my neck that I keep hidden
and the small of my back,
covered, and never occupied by a hand
and certainly not your hand

So when you think of me
and take a classic off that shelf
know
that you can flip through my pages
but that I am the place in which something occurred.

__

Francesca von Krauland is a Miami-born Cuban and Austrian writer. She is a lover of cappuccinos, cats, and conversations that go on for hours.

More by this writer:

• Traveling Alone With My Thoughts
• Sides
• Clarity
• Surfaces
• Salad and Sad Outcomes
• To Be Carefree
• Can I Escape the Person My Family Made Me?

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