Having coalesced around you, how I love you.
You are the one I breathe through the night for.
I take flesh in my mouth each day and chew
it into something that serves you, something more
than I can give you. I try to teach you what I know,
adopted child, about the past. The hunger and grief
of the bodies that taught you to survive in snow
you’ve never seen, to bare your teeth
at anyone getting too close to your kids
or your sweet, soft life. And all the times I endured
your laxatives and relaxers, I knew that you did
it to protect me, to make less of me to hate. Be sure
that I love you. And, of course, that I’ll outlive you.
And you haven’t asked, but of course, I forgive you.
Mary Block lives and writes in her hometown of Miami, Florida. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Mudfish, Best New Poets 2020, RHINO, Nimrod International Journal, and Sonora Review, among other publications. Her work can be found online at Rattle, SWWIM Every Day, Aquifer—The Florida Review Online, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of New York University's Creative Writing Program, a 2018 Best of the Net finalist, a 2012 finalist for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and a Pushcart Prize nominee.
Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s National Poetry Month project: Sing the Body: A Collection of Poems Praising Our Selves!
With support from Florida International University’s Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab (WPHL) and Florida International University’s Center for Women and Gender Studies, we are publishing poems that celebrate body positivity and our selves.
In addition to publishing the poems as poems of the day, 10 select Sing the Body poems will be displayed on FIU’s main campus near mirrors and places where women encounter themselves. These poems will live in a dedicated portfolio on our website.
Thank you, as always, for reading and supporting SWWIM Every Day! Happy National Poetry Month!
