Places My Body Hurts
At the mountain’s base, vertigo clinging
like blue mist to my eyelashes.
//
In a new waiting room, my spine curved
into a question mark, my pen sketching symptoms
on an empty man’s silhouette.
//
On the metro, I sit my invisible pain on the handicapped seat
and watch briefcased men count their steps.
//
In a Charlottesville pie shop, my best friend smiling
with blueberries for teeth.
//
Lounging in a wilted lawn chair,
another July melting like sherbet
in sticky hands.
//
At the MET gift shop, my bones gnawing
through polished floorboards. I blow my paycheck
on postcards of paintings I haven’t seen.
//
In my bed, suspended in the watery walls of half-dream.
I blink myself to morning. The hurt is how I know I’m awake.
Winter Solstice, 2020
Jupiter and Saturn are visible side-by-side for the first time in 400 years. The internet is excited,
but I’m tired of living through history. When I look to the sky for the rare Christmas star, I see
only chimneys. I’ve always found outer space distressing: a vast, barren darkness we send our
fears and flags into. It’s the same reason I hate winter’s endless nights and lifeless gardens,
footprints frozen in muddy fields.
For centuries we’ve known how to break the darkness: mistletoe and pine boughs. Candles in
every window. My sister was born 27 years ago, a screaming, slick burst of life on the shortest
day of the year. My parents called her their Christmas miracle, though no villagers followed a
star for miles to lay gifts at her feet. In home videos, she’s sweet and pink, my parents trancelike
with exhaustion and adoration.
December’s the only time I wish I had a God, something to believe in when the whole year’s
been a long, dark night. Hymns promise Jesus died so we might have a second life, but I’d prefer
a God who made our first lives more bearable. I wish I were comforted by faith in future peace,
but the truth is, I’m still a child inside. If there’s something better, I want it now. If there’s relief
from this, please God, grant it now.
Sarah Ebba Hansen is a writer from Virginia. She has received awards from the Academy of American Poets
and Nimrod International Journal. Sarah received her MFA in poetry from Virginia Tech, and her work has
appeared or is forthcoming in The Sun Magazine, 32 Poems, Brevity, Room Magazine, storySouth, and
elsewhere. Instagram: @sarahebba Twitter: @sarahebba25
Photo by Ylanite Koppens from Pexels