Adrineh: I Am In My Room

I am in my room
Where I can often be found
Listening to lovers’ songs
That is more like background noise
As my life often is.

I see the wooden dancer
Brought from Armenia
She is bare-breasted
With free-flowing hair
And jubilant skirt!
Her head covered
With what is part of my history now
A tambourine in her hand
Raised high
Eyes closed
Dancing to music
Only she can hear.

I am lying on my bed
My naked body exposed
In the only safest place
Left on this Earth
My Aloneness
I wrap it around me
Like a bright red-orange scarf
One of the few things
My mother brought with her
To this godforsaken country
When she was 21
How old I am now.

My body
With its own history
Too many
Taking parts of it
Have TAKEN pieces of it
Slowly for years and centuries
Sometimes
Going to the gym helps
I give my body strength
So it may appear that
My mind is strong too
And it has its walls
As I always have.

I pretend that I am
Protected
By this strength
Like the black obsidian stone
That populates
The other country
Where I should’ve been born
But can only visit
Like the few other tourists
Because nobody ever really
Just goes to Armenia
With its mountainous land
And ancient customs
Unless they want to study
Or exotify
Us somehow.

But my body knows
What my mind cannot comprehend
When I was hospitalized
Because I couldn’t walk for days
And the white male doctors
Could not understand
What is/ what was
That was wrong with me.

But my body remembered
The year before
I had gone to Armenia
For the very first time
To see relatives
I never knew I had
And my body reacts
Upon my return
Not because of something
I ate when I was there
As they would have me believe
But because it was misplaced
Lost
Forgotten
Somewhere
In that space inbetween.


Used here by permission.