This Body by Savannah Cooper

This Body

After I moved out, my parents talked
about buying a gun and ammunition,
storing both in their bedroom closet.

For the first time, I told my mother
I’d wanted to die when I was a teen,
if I’d had a gun handy I might have
managed it, might not be here now.

Her shock was palpable over the phone,
her uncertainty around emotion as heavy
as ever. I’m sorry, I didn’t know.

I wanted to tell her more—
about learning to mask myself
from a young age, about feigning belief
and security, about breaking again
and again, about insomnia, even about
watching soft-core porn at 3AM
when I couldn’t sleep, feeling like
a criminal every time I masturbated

because this is what she and my father
made me, this is what the church gave me:
guilt and shame and regret, hatred
for every inch of this body and mind.

But instead I said something lame, let
the topic fall into awkward silence.
My parents never bought a gun. I never
told them what their god took from me.

*

Savannah Cooper (she/her) is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet, bisexual mess, and amateur photographer. Her work has been previously published in more than 30 journals, including Parentheses Journal, Midwestern Gothic, and Mud Season Review. Her debut poetry collection Mother Viper is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press.