Aimee Suzara
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To be at home in this body
To be at home in this body means to understand
Its residence as temporary. To live inside of it
Is to live inside a house that can be demolished,
Its basement flooded by a typhoon, or walls
Eaten away by termites. Perhaps to be evicted
From it when the rent gets too high, or cancer
Enters its foundation, invisible and efficient,
Never polite enough to enter through the door.
Or to be stricken by a flu or any mysterious illness
So that every tear is purple falling from our cheeks.
To be at home in this body is to scrutinize its unease
In cold places, where once it thrived, once when
We believed we were meant for North America,
New York, the Pacific Northwest, never the heavy
Air of our mother and father’s islands, gauzed
With droplets of sea and the wings of mosquitoes.
We hid so long in those winter coats, hiding
our shape. We ignored the appearance of mirrors,
Frightened by our own cheekbones. We considered
Quite honestly, how blue contacts will look, masking
Our brown. We did not believe these eyes, amber
Almost, flecked with fossils that we would later
Study, anthropologist of ourself, excavating
Our own cavity – we did not believe they were
Beautiful – only the result of belonging to the
Unfortunate lineage of those foreign places. We even
Entered womanhood like this. We, effacer of our
Own features, we believed that beneath all of this,
We are all the same. But we know better. To be the same
As those who would destroy our image, would make
Us savage, would be to ridicule our own parents’ tongues
Why would we want to be like those destroyers?
We are not like them.
It is a nightmare they have subscribed to, and we
Refuse to be cast in its parts, a nightmare in which they
Are the victors and we the conquest. They the superior
And we the lower caste. Until we open our mouths,
We are as dark skinned as those they claim aliens
Crossing borders. Until we open our mouths, we
The same skin they spent centuries staining with
Rhetoric and Violence.
We from those dark corners of the earth,
Meant to be washed clean, so said Pear’s soap.
& We almost took that poison,
Hiding from the sun. We see some like us
Deliberately erasing their melanin,
As though this would
Make their noses grow thin.
If we were any darker,
We would invoke fear.
We want to replace all
Of the characters on TV, so that other girls can see
Their faces reflected back. We want to inhabit
All of the rooms where we are rarely given admission,
To build our houses and reside in them.
To be at home in this body is not to calculate its
Diminishment, but to celebrate its fullness. & to
Satisfy its hunger for love and affection. & to be
Naked and say, “these cells connect me to that
Place, those islands, my people,
and until you can see this body,
This face, these cheekbones, this brown skin, these eyes,
Reflected everywhere, just as plentiful as we are -
The daughters and sons of those Islands, I will
Tell you about this Body and all that it binds me to.”
Gladly and with a vengeance.
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Aimee Suzara is an Oakland-based Filipino-American poet, playwright, and performer whose mission is to create, and help others create, poetry and theater to provoke dialogue and social change. She is the author of the book, SOUVENIR (WordTech Editions 2014), which was a Finalist for the WILLA Award 2015, and has been invited to perform her poetry and visit classrooms nationally. A member of Playground SF, her work has been staged at the Berkeley Repertory Theater and the Thick House, part of the The National One-Minute Play Festival, APAture, National Queer Arts Festival, and supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Zellerbach Foundation, and a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts YBCAway Award. She teaches college writing and composition, currently at De Anza College. www.aimeesuzara.net