How I Learned to Be Like Water
By: Yvette Sierra-Vignau
(content warning: sexual assault/intimate violence)My memory is a pit of fractures.
Hands reach into my skull to pull
them out instead pulling out black
birds with red feathers they float
above my palms like clouds
I am awash with the pounding
of their cries Save us! Save us!
I don’t remember if his arms
wrapped around my small frame
as he held me from behind no
that I do not remember I do not
remember I pushed him away
my voice shouting in my mind
as I stayed so still no I do not
remember his tongue in my ear
my hands filling with ocean
I do not remember his disdain
or his laughter or his body
pressed against my back I
do not remember the pain
the crashing of waves no I do
Are you making this up?
I reach in my skull
full of earthworms
and pull flowers.
Alcohol is less dense than water.
Water, less dense than blood.
Water can be a barrier to water.
Watch as water splits its self in a
clock-glass holding oil. See what
happens when you add alcohol.
I once bled on the sidewalk before
the rain. The blood stayed for days
after the sky dried.
I used to get drunk or not at all
choosing to landslide rather than
try to sleep sober. Dreams meant
drink less water.
Do you remember when I asked
you what I should do?
Me neither.
My body is political.
Blood-stained underwear an act
of resistance, hot flood of no’s,
streams of consciousness become
unconscious, the recollection of all
the women I know and once knew
all drowned in the same river
a dam, a flood, a dam
a silence.
In order for something to be true—
no —believable, they say it must
hold water.