It is stifling here in this room.
It is in the front of the house
and all day the sun bakes
it through the wall.
The window is small,
large enough only to let in heat.
All night the walls close in,
press upon me. But Uncle is kind
enough to allow me here, so I can’t complain.
Even sleep has become a burden.
It is my sickness. I know this.
My body rebels against itself.
I lay all night in my sweat,
and when I wake,
the yellow ring where my body was.
Sometimes, too,
there is blood.
It seeps into my hair, and delicately paints
the head of my shadow self.
I cannot tell, in the dark,
what is sweat or blood.
I am too weary to turn on the light,
to wipe anything away. Some mornings
I wake to find my bladder
or bowels have betrayed me during the night;
my image painted in everything my body expels.
Each dawn I must walk painfully to the river
to wash the sheets. I do not want Uncle to see my shame.
I wash them again behind the house so that he may see them clean.
See that I obey his only command.
This morning
I am too weary
to walk
and the stones
of the dawn
are too hard.
The river,
too cold.
I shall fold up this sheet,
hide it
beneath
the mattress.
It hurts
to eat,
burns
to drink.
My body now
has nothing
left
to stain.
All that was left in me
is now
beneath
the bed.
When Uncle goes out to market today,
I shall take a fresh white sheet from the trunk.
I shall drape my bed in it. I shall lie down and wait.
–E. K. Mortenson,
The Fifteenth Station (2012)
Accents Publishing
