BURQA

Peggy in "Change+ing Room," at Fahimeh Vahdat's exhibit, October 2012

  

remove glasses and

slip under black cloak

I peer through a slit

pressing down on thick eyelids

            inside mother’s protective womb

            cushioned in layers of fluid, muscle, bony pelvis, skin

            you cannot see me but I hear you

            hear everything

in silent blackout

breath condenses

under synthetic silk

           

            forming heart, lungs, ovaries

            limbs curled into trunk

walking through a crowd

space clears for me

like a road opens for an ambulance

            you do not know what I will become

            you do not know the generations of women’s rage I embody

            to you I am a bump yet unconscious

sensing my silent steps

conversation stops

sitting still I become invisible

eavesdrop on the last time I was in Turkey

and dinner plans

downtown or third ward?

            gestational I am carrier

            of my grandmother’s untold stories

            the egg that would hatch me

            formed in her womb

            as she carried my mother

eyes glance then dart away           

better to not look

an unspoken complicity

let’s not talk to her

            what lengths will you take to ignore me?

            what would I reveal given the chance?

            what threat does the curve of my hips present?

            clavicles, cleavage, clitoris?

           

cloaked and alone

in the eye of my own churning hurricane

I must hide my hands under black cloth

afraid of what they will commit