The Shapes I’ve Been

I say I know Minnesota like the back of my hand.
I don’t know the back of my hand.
I wouldn’t recognize it on the street or if it slammed a door.

1

Not like I recognize the lines etched near my eyes,
I saw them emerging at 20 and panicked.

I stared in the mirror and smiled. I watched as the creases deepened with the smile
And saw them fade as I found my mouth in what would one day be known
As resting bitch face.
But with no smile, the lines were barely visible.
My face like flattened origami – I knew the cracks were still there.

2

My hand is nothing special,
But I know the way my body has fluctuated with time.
I know how the curve of my body was sharp
And concave with angles and edges
That slice.

3

My body knows ways the measuring tape has
Wrapped around the soft spots
And my fingertips journaled the numbers religiously
In notebooks as a child and teen, smudging graphite pinky joints across the page
And now has sophisticated into excel spreadsheets. That won’t matter when I die.

I know the numbers from the scale, I know the ones where I feel comfortable in my skin
I know the numbers that are wrong,
I know when I am suffocating in my shape.
I know when I am anchored down like Jacob Marley by pounds instead of chains of guilt.
And I can’t breathe.

4

I saw the white hair when I was 16 at the salon on main street across from the bar called Babe’s.
I wore that hair with pride and swore I’d never color it,
But then 5 years later, as a young bride, it was plucked from my head without my consent.
And I cried, over the loss of my Irish heritage.

At 34 I colored my white hairs, to try something different and wrangle my youth
That was slipping away. Where was my pride of Irishness then?

5

I knew the roads of Minnesota engraved in my brain before I could see out of the window and the windows needed to be rolled down by hand, with a crank.

In my car seat with brown plastic vinyl
That cracked with its age and pinched my skin
While the cotton fill puffed out like cottage cheese.

I didn’t know the names of roads, but I knew the way they felt – the way I shifted in the car and wide-eyed saw the stars at night. I knew the turns, I knew north and south
And the emotions that came with the journey and the experiences I had.

The places I had been mapped my life like an etch-a-sketch across the state, some scribbles darker and stronger than others.

6

And now, tabula rasa.
The caress of the measuring tape is not quite right. The numbers on the scale are tilted too high.
I feel my belly – and underneath the seam, the scar, where the babies came from.
And I am happy. Because I made life.

7

And I know Minnesota because it’s there under my eyelids and under my skin all 40.5 years of it.
But Florida is a small piece of the coast I am becoming acquainted with
I only know two roads or three
And so, it’s a blank slate.
To be filled in reverse.

I know it, like the back of my hand.

 

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash