Eve’s Anatomy

Throat

I smell whiskey and sweat walking behind me. The sun is gone, the streets are bare. As the scent comes closer, I swallow fear down my throat. He stumbles past me, and I exhale, feeling dizzy.

Within my throat, I carry every burden as I walk alone. It's difficult to tell the intentions of a passing shadow. And when my instincts are right, when the predator has made his most passionate move, my throat is expected to be a warm place for a silenced voice.

Breasts

I watch men morph into beasts and howl at the sight of a naked breast. I watch them choke on their thoughts and feel repulsed by the public feeding of a child. I see a man tell a lie to get a touch. I see men condemn a girl's cleavage. Hes a patron of sexuality and an expert at modesty.

I’m growing older in a world that uses breasts to sell cotton to hide them. Here, you can profit off of a woman. You can sell cars, guns, food, and happiness, with an airbrushed breast. And you can make an entire population question whether their anatomy that nurtures life is adequate enough to love.

Hands

A domesticated pair. They endure cuts and burns. They heal themselves through the expectations of their purpose. It's abnormal that my mother uses hers to save withering lives in hospital beds. It's abnormal that I use mine to write. Still, our hands are tied because not every woman is free of the shackles wrapped around her wrists.

Stomach

I was eleven when I first began to hate my stomach. I'm nineteen and I sink into the floor when the mirror reflects rolling skin.

I was taught to be thin.

When I eat, I swear at my organs and pity my lack of self-control. I criticize my stomach as it grows with the changes in sunlight. I'm exhausted, cycling through the same fears of my body, year after year.

Someday, I want to be a mom. But will my trained obsession with flatness suffocate the feeling of growing a baby until my desire for motherhood disappears?

Arms

A purple wound grows brightly in the shape of a hand on her skin. He said he didn't mean it.

She covers the marks with long sleeves. Marks from him, and eventually, marks from her. I saw her long sleeves and thought nothing of the hot weather. But beneath the drapes, splotches of purple kept growing.

Hips

Between the opposite ends of my hips are the organs of an artist. As I grow, this structure widens, making room for the potential of creation.

I can't fit into the same jeans I wore a year ago. This body changes, and to the world, it's never perfect. But perfection does not matter to the men who whistle as they drive past my new hips. They salivate like starved dogs at the changes I am afraid of.

Legs

The dress code for girls is a khaki skirt. So, I am wearing a khaki skirt but with shorts underneath because I want to cartwheel on the grass.

It's the twelfth year of my life and last week I menstruated for the first time. Now I'm a woman? Now I'm vulnerable and a liability.

I'm sitting on a bench with my friends when I notice a man with big, offended eyes, examining my khaki skirt and staring at my reddening face.

"Close your legs."

Now I'm a woman and a liability.

Now my legs are closed.

Vagina

The womb of desire. The anatomy that builds life and disrupts equality. They want this place to wreak sensuality and drip virginity.

I'm lying stiff on a mattress, and I see how misused the vagina is. He is hungry for pleasure, and I am the nearest warm body. He begs. Others force. And still, the world wishes for a child-bearing virgin.

The habitat I thought I understood, now has become painstakingly clear. It is impossible to satisfy, when every expectation is meant to work against you.

Eyes

My eyes are glass. They see that I am naked in the Garden of Gods and Monsters. The juice has turned bitter, but I chew, and I chew, and I chew, until I have eaten all of the fruit. I have the poison inside me. The poison of growing old, knowing more, and realizing the fruit was never evil-- the evil is within the poems that inspire the patriarchy.

Published in Eclectca 2023