Today's poem is by Jesse Lee Kercheval

Abandon
       

I want to draw myself naked, a dancer shedding silk scarves, but I am new to art and though I can sketch my face—two eyes with dark circles under them, long sharp nose, pursed prune of a mouth—my body is unknown to me, at least from the outside. I take off my clothes, look down and see curving scar cutting what used to be my navel in two like a neighborhood forever divided by an interstate highway. Far below, my big toes, the right stiff throbbing with arthritis as I lean forward to see my own legs. I feel my body more than see it. The two optic nerves nothing compared to the thousand in every inch of my skin, in the 100 million behind those scars in my stomach, in the ones shouting in that damn throbbing toe. Without the pain, I might guess this body was abandoned, roof caved in, stairs to the front door missing and the door long gone as well. But I am it. And so, leaning over, I draw the long uneven line of my right leg down to my toe. Unsteady ink ballerina. Then stand there.

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Copyright © 2024 Jesse Lee Kercheval All rights reserved
from Five Points
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission