by Ajanae Dawkins
I don’t understand the question…Is this about opening my mouth or about the visibility of my blood? Is this about me or my mama? The litany of women? I guess you would have to ask my girls, who scrub the stone streets before they drag me about how quiet I get when I remember, when the sadness hits. Everyone who knows me has said I don’t know how to be sad, but I just think sadness and my body are incompatible. I can feast on rage without my body dissolving in shakes. I can drown in lust…Does that not answer the question? I think vulnerability is when you let someone else dress your wounds, but I like the way I clean myself. I’m tender headed you know so there’s a way I like to move through the matting. There’s a way I like to drain myself. Sometimes when I want to be honest about the searing edges of any wound I gag instead. I sleep. I tell a crude joke about his dick. About our lack of sex and lots of humping and tongue and tongue. Then I get really funny and I cry laughing about death and about how he must think I’m crazy. It’s funny really. I swear. You’d have to be there…Well no, he doesn’t laugh. He usually just looks concerned but he does hold me tighter. I do text my girls though just to say hi, and I’m drowning, and I’ll see them on the other side.