An Anatomical Dissection

Leah Toledano || Fall 2020

You yearn for the origin of your dreams and
the source of your sleep. You imagine the core
to look like a very strange place. It is.

Salience and identity,
hybrids and new amalgamations.
You can purify yourself now,
or perhaps, it is the opposite of purity.
You dig deep, deeper into the filth,
until you are covered in it. Filth, you are filthy now.

Trudging through the dysfunction,
and sifting through the destruction,
you return to your cocoon.
Here, you wonder if you are free
from ritualistic OCD.

It took years to dismember yourself,
oxidizing those toxic things,
letting them rot in the stuffy air,
and preserving the finer things in jars
that are now aligned in an orderly fashion.

Though, you still have years of work to do.
You are still sorting and taking risks,
and you understand if others can’t be patient
as you unlearn that abuse and love coexist.

Identity politics still keeps you awake some nights:
body tossing, torso twisting, legs spread, jaw clenched.
But you don’t want all your filth to be defined somehow.
You identify with your innards, raw organs,
red blood and tissue now.