Body Must Remember
sometimes i wonder on my mother’s desires—
desires beyond mothering warm children in early morning
rumpled beds and what wants her mother body knew about
need held in woven muscles and harboring eager bones and
those moving salt oceans and craving stones in the body
but my aging woman’s body often gazed upon by flicking
occasional eyes that judge a curve and crease,
my body knows desires on those long days that bones who
grew daughters speak about the way water talks
with body skin and sweat and my mother’s
desires that maybe lay on tongues like that
warm mint and that melted honey tea she served to
guests in chipped teacups with brown bread
flour covering her kneading hands
as mouths filled with that last pool of sweet conversation
on the bottom of leaving warmed and empty cups
what did she ask her longing skin to get at her own desires,
to call desire to her full and yearning body
that grew hips and clavicle – women’s blood and
tissue and wants because we do want and
want and sometimes i wonder on my,
my body and desire but I can’t ask my
long-dead mother for only half memories
about aging and my woman’s body
but i haven’t lost her mother voice talking about
knowing an aging body and me as enough so
enough that each current of blood is
sticky electric on skin
like some deep beating music on
longer nights when wind is warm and
yes it’s sweet and hot desire is
like finally breathing and i ask about all
desires and love on my own body and the word
love is like wanting much too much and
i let water into all the spaces of my body but
my body won’t forget taste and my body must cry
for its own salt and i wonder at the space of
my skin and touch and the water in others and i
forget an ocean and forget crying on mornings
that don’t fit right and we laugh that we cry in this
family – carrying our mother’s bones and old stories
and i forget and remember to hear the desire in silences
sitting alone with memories of my mother’s song
records on high and loud and i don’t cry much
and my mother always said to get it all out
break open the chests and break it open on
monthly blooding sheets but when the body misses
and age creates new body when it skips and maybe beats
on a different note and then what does this body need
because my body knows relief and patterns in rituals
and the waves speak as memories of certain mother knowledge
and a friend says wind is relief and we must breathe into
it and hear and feel our own body and the wind pushes
the windows on the east of that house on nights that
don’t sleep and i don’t know the water of my body anymore
and i don’t know salt on my tongue that
must miss the path of water over my breast and down legs
because i always remember the anger of angry men
who formed my tongue in twisting flooded mouths
but my body must remember more than this violence
left as a lost breath – the desire of its own heat and
and what of kindness and generous languages of
love and touches that come through exposed
ribcages that know how to undo and
unbraid from body and talk about love and play love
and playing in love – love grows into bones strung together
broken and whole in sheltering body connections
that know and carry body in relationships
with mother voices who formed new bones from
ancestors and their sounds of calling all
desires to a body – to my body
By Rain Wright
Biography:
Rain Wright received her Ph.D. in English with a focus in creative writing from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She currently teaches writing at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa as a lecturer.
