Returning
by Elizabeth BJ
I.
My home became a house
with broken windows and rusty doors
when your hands slipped inside
like a diver swimming into the ocean
but i was made of desert
and your claws wounded the sand
setting all on fire with friction
until it crumbled down to the ground
and I became a ghost
who cannot haunt you
because vacant buildings
never minded intruders much,
next time you see me
i am a little girl who flinches
at sight and not motions.
II.
I was rain
not wet but divided
into drops and hail
hitting and caressing
and cleaning and
leaving footprints of mud behind
III.
A hand-made sweater
knitted the patters my grandma thought me
but forgetting all the words she would’ve said
was being made
to cure me from the cold
of a long winter in July
made with threads made with sentences
from the lips of someone else
who had claimed the kingdom of her body
all back for herself
as the only, truly, dignified
master, queen and heir.
IV.
The rain became the ocean
then a river
and I changed.
All the cells on my cover
that once knew them, clawed monsters
where no longer here nor theirs
and I swam against the current
back to the top of the land
and the ghost lighted up all the light bulbs
on the house, turn the stove on,
and out of thin air
I was me.
My home became a house
with broken windows and rusty doors
when your hands slipped inside
like a diver swimming into the ocean
but i was made of desert
and your claws wounded the sand
setting all on fire with friction
until it crumbled down to the ground
and I became a ghost
who cannot haunt you
because vacant buildings
never minded intruders much,
next time you see me
i am a little girl who flinches
at sight and not motions.
II.
I was rain
not wet but divided
into drops and hail
hitting and caressing
and cleaning and
leaving footprints of mud behind
III.
A hand-made sweater
knitted the patters my grandma thought me
but forgetting all the words she would’ve said
was being made
to cure me from the cold
of a long winter in July
made with threads made with sentences
from the lips of someone else
who had claimed the kingdom of her body
all back for herself
as the only, truly, dignified
master, queen and heir.
IV.
The rain became the ocean
then a river
and I changed.
All the cells on my cover
that once knew them, clawed monsters
where no longer here nor theirs
and I swam against the current
back to the top of the land
and the ghost lighted up all the light bulbs
on the house, turn the stove on,
and out of thin air
I was me.
Elizabeth BJ is a Mexican writer in her early twenties. She studies English language and literature at UNAM, and she has been running a personal blog, along with other projects on her social media (@cazandocolibris / @andreaebj). Besides that mess, she has written for different platforms and recently one of her poems was published by Red Universitara de Mujeres Escritoras.