Miscarriage 

It’s only human to make mixtapes
honey of sixteen in the body
feast of rhythmic toes dipping in, dipping out 
of the dog’s accidents on icy kitchen tiles

I was beautiful as I spun 
to my cells’ sputtering spells 
medley of millennial pop, grating blender at max
slam of cherries, overripe bananas and yogurt 
into wondrous froth
 
oh, blessed sweet relief on the other side 
of bureaucratic hours in classrooms calcifying 
calluses on my palm 
   
my uniform billowed at the knees
exposing the scrawny acreage of my thighs
as though the palace of the body
didn’t know how to do anything 
but flourish

my arms embraced my not-breasts
tender silk of my wrists indented 
by the clover medallion in the realm 
between clavicles 
refinery of future’s luck to package its sugar 
into insistent bones 

I stepped my fingers down my traps
puckered my lips in uncertain 
intimacy rehearsing 
embarrassment with decoy 
lovers that don’t even greet me
in dreams

ugliness thrust its criminal mob at me 
as it destroyed my body 
into a peculiar object I can’t shake

touch is a whip cracking 
down on the spine 
where desire once drew me into 
a furnace stoked with affection   

oh, if only I could show you trace 
evidence of what I swear 
thrived here 
I swear a caress 
was once a prayer
I swear my body 
was once a temple 

oh, if only I had footage  
but there isn’t any

not of that dalliance between me 
and primrose air  
not of that unthought posture
embodied outside brackets
of the verb “stand” before voting booths, cafes, storefronts 
not of my racing feet only outpaced
by my racing heart 
at a swipe right to Tinder

not of that middle-aisle 
blatantly marketed as motherhood
as if anybody with a pair of X chromosomes and motivated ovaries 
could colonize a body 
with its own revision  

as if it’s only human 
to walk along the roads of a body
without gates
sacred familiar fields 
of flesh

as if it’s only human 
to unwind reels of daylight through 
all your 16-year-old 
possible bodies 
to test their fit like 
summertime shorts your mom delivered across 
a dressing room’s partition 
anywhere but
here




Truth Lies Elsewhere 

to love this life, its sallow skeleton hooked
between the 26 bones of my feet
my bleary-eyed biceps & blood
my metal-rimmed eyelashes flutter to REM back
everything   
lost

unworn 
sneakers my mom cleared out of my closet to invite solace into the
screaming-match of her evangelical worry spooked 
only by lathering barbecue off dinnerware, shooting emails
in the dark at doctors who can’t tie
my loose ends
can’t explain the colors of my ongoing
extinction

throw away  
deduction

who has it ever screened
in the empty bed of tangled twilights?

I am the uncharted wilderness
not there, wherever there was but over the mountains of translation
beyond your GPS of barking days, overlords of nameless achievements
forgone pennies in your coat pockets, past night’s broken 
drain of light, past fears of not knowing where I don’t 
stand in sweat as you play 
accountant of temporal space 

take away my shape 
& I’ll shape this residing substance 
into dim music I can almost believe in, 
wind battering rain leaches into the jackhammer 
of another auditory hallucination in my brain’s sewage 
of missing, its abiding lovesickness for my history

life turns its back
it’s always a matter of when
it’s always been a matter 
of when 

I miss you, mom, even while you’re 
right here, the wide hinge of your ear stapled to this page
I can’t help it, the way you’re 
disappearing, the way I love you but flinch 
at your encampment on 
my left forearm at dusk, the way I can’t 
upload further intel into my impaled nervous system
pints poured onto a meniscus     

to love this life, I pitch ruin
against ruin, erosion against
erosion to stave off the end after
my end

to love even black swans of 
grief’s rotted peaches
its supplicant seasons turn somber winter into 
stale winter nostalgic for spring, for that life left

I scan yokes spilling yellow onto 
mashed avocado, smear of tragic 
vegetables I can’t mobilize against my pitiful tongue
tunnel of irreconcilable lenses sway the world as if to invade 
reparations for blastocysts my cells can’t rock on the rails to sleep, can’t walk
my dad’s X chromosome to the sky’s torn edge of meaning, but the crash 
of out there waves, the right here rain

songs I build out of
what’s too difficult to say

songs I build out of
what’s available
because my black bones
flickering in the only body I have left
too lonely to feel
alone

we are no chimera, no centaur in ancient cache 
my mom & I too disjointed  
too dependent
I am too grown to live at her knee 
buckled into her hand in tie-dyed tees soaked through 
with bathing suits chlorinated 
in backflips of glee beneath 
the surface of mortal things
 
my speaking & crying are done 
with me but I’m not done using sound
we’re never done using
the body even as its wings fly off
we’re never done with space
risk all to be in it
to be it

I could never have guessed at it, this second 
secondhand life as if I chose it with my No. 2 pencil on the SAT
in my rolled-down socks, the isotope 
of my spine tucked into fictions
my teeth in plastic supplied with instructions 
for the fairy in case she got lost, lost track of her inventory
in case she forgot to jot down the fever-sprinting girl 
in her midnight roster, the girl built 
of delirious lollipop tattoos on her tongue 
scrawl of straggling restless consonants resolved
to live for everything, everything 
that can’t be resolved across 
the minutes of life




Otherwise 

to strip bare
I dare you to live 
in reverse, to step into the plodding mechanism of the body 
divested of its bells and whistles
to carry it all on your back
that first oversized backpack mom strapped over 
your tender shoulders as burnt cinnamon toast slathered 
in butter broke apart on your tongue
 
to learn this world though the soles
heels on boiling asphalt, ants mounting the field of toes
eyes unfamiliar with death drifting 
down with want in the rough acres of September 
for a ladybug to curl your vaulted arch
oh, sanctuary of barefoot breath

you didn’t know the limitless 
trail of losses as mom pressed a jam sandwich against 
your crustless sternum
coaxing an “I love you” from rusty bones
you didn’t know stitched you into 
the wilting daffodil of your body

what's the sound of absence just before 
it dawns?

what’s the shade of that alternate world
annulled just before its inception?

to slip into glossy membranes, oily viscera, slick blood
strata of vertebrae you could almost expand to hopscotch across
wild steam rising from the kettle of 
the husband, seven children, hotel beds, the driver’s license, spliced genomes—
oh, guileless lost kingdom of what-ifs too painful to list
too painful not to list

I wait but the right words don’t come
I’ll continue waiting
I have nothing better to do 

grassy valleys of the biome your impossible feet in the 
wrong body at the bullseye of a target 
moist fibers trembling in the quiet breeze
the patient hairs of this Earth— 
all your life you only wanted to stroke with your whole body, 
to feel the pulp of the real, the thrust of love so bottomless 
it dresses up decay
sweeps history under its verdant rug

weight you didn’t bear in shells of your flesh
succulent spines of experiences
you bear as negative matter—
centrifuge of what endures nameless 
obese husks of dear losses, mirages of molecules 
sutured to stolen memories 

I am too clean for this world

all I ever longed to do is to love this mortal cargo
to trip in my broken auditory cortex over my mom’s words—
to prostrate, to fling on the altars of being here
to nod at the fog, the alders, the peacock blue cotton shirt of the man
who never felt the yearning taste of my lips, stars lifting 
into dark, to be free in this one and only body
to throw song against the stained
glass of my ribcage under a shower’s warm spray, to loosen the screws 
of my hips, my elbows 
to scale the arpeggio of this temple
to be my own beloved
to be my own

how do you carry the sharp teeth
bloody gums in the fertile soil under your lilac eyelids
roads you didn’t know you balanced on 
your wings as you paved spring—
matchstick of a daughter 
ceaseless river of could-have-beens
bright creature of another world rutted with elemental nutrients
currency of light marbled with shadow
bone of my bone but not
my bone
flesh of my flesh but not 
my flesh
I want to say I dove headfirst into living even if I surface with 
wounded hands
I wanted to leave here shouting from the rafters  
I gardened a body
I tilled a life

About the Author:

At 27, verging towards a doctorate at Harvard, Elly Katz went for a mundane procedure to stabilize her neck. Somehow, she survived what doctors surmised was unsurvivable: a brainstem stroke secondary to a physician’s needle misplacement. In the wake of tragedy, she discovered the power of dictation and the bounty of metaphor.

*Feature image by Denis Agati on Unsplash