Imagen de Yagul (Ana Mendieta, 1973)

Sara Watson
| poetry

 

from the Silueta series

I am twenty-five and shrouded in flowers, lying in my own shallow grave. You could call it premonition. But look now: I come back to life. Here I am standing, brushing the leaves from my skin. This isn’t practice but it is a kind of repetition. Reenactment. Ritual. To be a body who rises. To be a body who does not rise. You could call it inevitable. But tell me: If 1 in 3 women is thrown out the window by her man, how are any of us meant to stay alive? I am making a record in the shape of my body that reads I was here I was here. If the answer to my body is a window, then you are looking through that window now.

Sara Watson is a feminist writer and educator. Her chapbook, Our Imaginary Childhood, is available from Finishing Line Press. She lives with animals in Pittsburgh.

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Portrait of Myself (Florine Stettheimer, 1923)
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Birthday (Dorothea Tanning, 1942)