Introduction by Tiffany Troy

Samia Mimo writes: “My body is a fable my mind refuses to read.” Like the room that the poem’s speaker dwells lives in, it bears witness for her other unbroken half, of possibilities that do not seek to be erased by soap. I loved the grace in the “silly continuity” in the face of the immensity of “I am born with a cracked hymen too”, and “peace in the form of a rollerblading Barbie and not depravity in the form of touches in a cage.” There is a solemnity in Mimo’s diction that complements the sexual trauma of her female speaker.

I. the room

There’s nothing special about the room: I live in it still, the walls still stare down at me and the queen-size bed still cradles me like my mother. Something in it lingers and rots from 2021, maybe it’s fear or humiliation or reality. Reality is something that has never lied to me, a silent god in my mouth and the only god that has never needed me to be on my knees.

The humiliation is something else, something that I still cannot name even though it’s on the tip of my tongue and behind my eyelids when I close my eyes. I cannot name the feeling of his hands nor the way his voice echoed in my ears nor the way I froze. The fear is nothing anymore. Or maybe it is something. There is always that small doubt that creeps in because I don’t remember anything but humiliation and fear. When did it happen? How old was I? The room remembers and the memory festers—ugly, alive.

2. the cleansing

Soap tastes funny. I’ve always liked soap, all the different colors and scents and the solid feel of them in my hand. It was always meant to clean off dirt and make me smell like I belong to this world. Now I wash with a fervor until my body aches and prunes up. Maybe it’s an odd routine, maybe it’s that I like the water hot, maybe I’m not trying to erase anything. It foams up and washes away a little too fast.

3. the robbery

Mythology says that original humans were born with two heads, four arms and legs, with immense power that even Zeus feared. It is said he cut them into two and we’ve been searching for our other half since.

4. the longing

Who is it—what is it? What is it that I’ve been searching for? Sometimes I think I wasn’t cut into two. I think I was carved out harshly. Something essential was taken from me. I feel like I’ve been robbed when I’m overcome with grief like never before. Who could I have been, unbroken?

5. the body & mind

My body is a fable my mind refuses to read. It holds every ache, every touch that has long faded. My mind builds walls around it, calls it healing, but my body hums in this constant static. It must argue sometimes: my mind declares it’s over and my body whispers it never was.

6. the good ending

There isn’t one, truly. But the mornings are nicer—I wake up and I look at life and think about how beautiful it is. I drink coffee even though I hate it, eat a little too much sugar everyday, and move through the ordinary. I think it’s grace, this silly continuity. But it’s enough to live without choking on the what-ifs of life.

[hungry]

watch me crawl on hands and knees
barely breathing and angry
the kick, the ache, the need
hissing prayers
as fickle as a butterfly that feeds.

silence, it fights and it flees
it can kill or be crushed
maybe calamity scratches
in His throat and He swallows

i am glorious on fire
my throat has been sedated
artemisia—i am not afraid

the darkness i become
it will mould around the mouth

screaming

GIN AND TONIC & RADIUM  

his teeth gnaw me clean off the bone
but i awake with an anger, brightly burned,
my mouth opens ugly and the stars fall from it
i drink my anger like rum, let it burn my heart.

bright red, i am reborn
even the dark cannot look at me

“you survived.”
the old gods chant my name
“they seized you like they did to us.”
feast on the girl i was

HYMENAEUS COMES TO MY DOOR

I cannot remember it anymore, I just live in its consequences—
blessed in the way God will forgive his sins but not mine.
God still feasts with the devil, eats an apple of his own,
an apple that will never plague him like it did Eve.

I am its aftertaste, the rot in his mouth,
the orchard left trembling.

I am born by guilt, I am born from her rib, I am born with a cracked hymen too.

I committed a crime I have no memory of— you silly girl, you seduced him — but my wrists are bound by his nails and this is mercy for my unholiness, an exorcism, and punishment.I asked: for living? No, for letting your blood rush down your thighs before he consumed you, because who would want to leave the Garden of Eden?

TEARS AND AN ENGLISH MUFFIN

ABOUT THE MAN.

I will save you when the darkness swallows us whole.

You will float face-down in the Dead Sea and I will use my body as an anchor to save you even though all you deserve is to remain dead.

I will outgrow you by years.

You will die when I am 27 and by then I’ll have lived too many lifetimes to even try to remember your name until it comes to me on a wicked night in the darkness of my bedframe.

This is not mercy.


ABOUT THE GIRL.

This is not mercy.

I will save you when I remember you still exist somewhere.

You will find the fire cold on your bones and I will wrap you with my insistence and it will be the warmest thing to you.

I will die before you crawl out of the dark.

You will rest with a certainty that your final memory will be peace in the form of a rollerblading Barbie and not depravity in the form of touches in a cage.

*

Samia Mimo is a second-generation Bangladeshi American who finds a home amongst words. Having grown up reading, writing, and thinking a little too much, she has no doubt that she spends too much time inside her head. She writes across multiple genres—most favorably poetry and fiction—about feminism, her personal experiences regarding trauma, and retellings of myth.