Elizabeth Acevedo

it’s the being alone, i think, the emails but not voices. dominicans be funny, the way we love to touch — every greeting a cheek kiss, a shoulder clap, a loud. it gots to be my period, the bloating, the insurance commercial where the husband comes home after being deployed, the last of the gouda gone, the rejection letter, the acceptance letter, the empty inbox. a dream, these days. to work at home is a privilege, i remind myself. spend the whole fucking day flirting with screens. window, tv, computer, phone: eyes & eyes & eyes. the keys clicking, the ding of the 
microwave, the broadway soundtrack i share wine with in the evenings. these are the answers, you feel me? & the impetus. the why. of when the manicurist holds my hand, making my nails a lilliputian abstract, i close my fingers around hers, disrupting the polish, too tight i know then, too tight to hold a stranger, but she squeezes back & doesn’t let go & so finally i can.

And although I am a poet, I am not the bullet; I will not heat-search the soft points. I am not the coroner who will graze her hand over naked knees. Who will swish her fingers in the mouth. Who will flip the body over, her eye a hook fishing for government-issued lead. I am not the sidewalk, which is unsurprised as another cheek scrapes harsh against it. Although I too enjoy soft palms on me; enjoy when he rests on my body with a hard breath; I have clasped this man inside me and released him again and again, listening to him die thousands of little deaths. What is a good metaphor for a woman who loves in a time like this? I am no scalpel or high thread count sheet. Not a gavel, or hand-painted teacup. I am neither           nor romanced by the streetlamp nor candlelight; my hands are not an iron, but look, they’re hot, look how I place them           in love           on his skin and am still able to unwrinkle his spine.

A boy I did not marry                  taught me to dance salsa on 2      placed the fingers of his left hand            on my untutored spine;               you know what it’s like to become someone’s clave to love for the span           of the trombone’s long breath                  he      whispered negra so I spun                my heart landing            on     the     rum-covered     linoleum of a nightclub on what used to be New York Ave              in what used to be Chocolate City I let him turn & spin                                 my name bella negra his hands were less tender but still I let them roam when I 1, 2, 35, 6, 7 in front of my mirror I was always la negra defended in the lyric                       and     you     can     forgive searching hands when a mouth swells the biggest ache of your body into song