MY THERAPIST SAYS WHEN THERE'S TRAUMA, THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE
but it stores good things too:
the mechanics of tying a shoelace,
the hipfold of triangle pose, the slow
building of an orgasm.
I’ve forgotten the rhyme, but my fingers
remember: over, under, pull it tight
and through, how to make a bow
out of strings.
Even when the brain freezes,
the body knows to survive:
an infant instinctually swims
if dropped in water, we hold our
breath at the smell of fire.
The body’s smarter. Stubborn.
It keeps a closet locked full
of treasure: weeds and germs
we thought we plucked years ago
and scrubbed away with clorox.
I’m surprised by what it remembers,
what it knows that I don’t.
At the Vegas club, it electrifies
where I fold: at the scooping
of a back against back, the running
of a hand through hair,
the softness of a skin
I’d never touched. It was ready
when I wasn’t. It holds on
where I let go.
AT THE PALOMINO CLUB
In the dark room, I want to ask for more -
her skin soft as silk, I’ve melted
uselessly into a puddle. I know
you see me, my water face electrified
and embarrassed. I am a good girl -
or I was a good girl - and I’m acting
out of sorts.
How do I recover from this? I touch
her arms, her hair, her waist. There
is glitter in my brain like a snow
globe being shaken and I’m afraid
it will break.
At home we’re swirling in it. We find
traces of glitter in the carpet, specs
on dinner plates, even pieces in our bed -
we wake some mornings with translucent dots
like freckles on our naked bodies.
Let them stay, I say, let’s make
a mess, sleep with the sheets falling off
for a while or for a while longer.
I wonder what love can survive -
I hope it’s everything - and I clutch you
and clutch you again in the morning dark.
her skin soft as silk, I’ve melted
uselessly into a puddle. I know
you see me, my water face electrified
and embarrassed. I am a good girl -
or I was a good girl - and I’m acting
out of sorts.
How do I recover from this? I touch
her arms, her hair, her waist. There
is glitter in my brain like a snow
globe being shaken and I’m afraid
it will break.
At home we’re swirling in it. We find
traces of glitter in the carpet, specs
on dinner plates, even pieces in our bed -
we wake some mornings with translucent dots
like freckles on our naked bodies.
Let them stay, I say, let’s make
a mess, sleep with the sheets falling off
for a while or for a while longer.
I wonder what love can survive -
I hope it’s everything - and I clutch you
and clutch you again in the morning dark.
MY THERAPIST ASSIGNS HOMEWORK
In the mirror, tasked to love myself -
no, I reprimand, she said fall
in love - I play a game of eye spy
with my flaws. I spy with my little eye
a new parenthesis of wrinkles,
a double chin, my father’s witchy
nose, my glasses perched on triangular
stone. I want to watch it all smooth
over how the ocean turns shells
to sand, see instead an airbrushed
photo of anybody else. If I squint,
I spy the tiny hairs above my lips,
sharp like blades of grass, my pores
divets in the yard where flowers
should have grown instead. I spy
with my little eye a ribbon
of loose mascara, an earring
missing its back, the beginnings
of something concerning growing
on my right ear. When I was eight,
my mother sat me in front
of her bedroom mirror - a closet
covered in panels of glass -
and showed me each blackhead
on my nose and chin. She dug
at them between her fingernails,
pushing out accumulated scum
from the pits. I spy with my little
eye a hole where something else
might go, a mouth ready for new
words to tumble out, eyes looking
all about for home. If this is it,
I’d like to redecorate, declutter
a bit at the edges, throw
some things in the trash. I spy
with my little eye something green,
rings around pupils, a golden
highlight to my cheeks, a smile -
just a smile - on the face
of someone I might love
in a new life.
no, I reprimand, she said fall
in love - I play a game of eye spy
with my flaws. I spy with my little eye
a new parenthesis of wrinkles,
a double chin, my father’s witchy
nose, my glasses perched on triangular
stone. I want to watch it all smooth
over how the ocean turns shells
to sand, see instead an airbrushed
photo of anybody else. If I squint,
I spy the tiny hairs above my lips,
sharp like blades of grass, my pores
divets in the yard where flowers
should have grown instead. I spy
with my little eye a ribbon
of loose mascara, an earring
missing its back, the beginnings
of something concerning growing
on my right ear. When I was eight,
my mother sat me in front
of her bedroom mirror - a closet
covered in panels of glass -
and showed me each blackhead
on my nose and chin. She dug
at them between her fingernails,
pushing out accumulated scum
from the pits. I spy with my little
eye a hole where something else
might go, a mouth ready for new
words to tumble out, eyes looking
all about for home. If this is it,
I’d like to redecorate, declutter
a bit at the edges, throw
some things in the trash. I spy
with my little eye something green,
rings around pupils, a golden
highlight to my cheeks, a smile -
just a smile - on the face
of someone I might love
in a new life.
ABOUT EMILY LAKE HANSEN
Emily Lake Hansen is the author of Home and other Duty Stations (Kelsay Books, forthcoming 2020) and the chapbook The Way the Body Had to Travel (dancing girl press, 2014). Her poetry has appeared in Atticus Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Rust + Moth, Midway Journal, and SWWIM Every Day among others. She is a Phd student at Georgia State University and serves as the poetry editor for Minerva Rising Press.