Which Love? Which Body?

Which Love?

I knew the tongue but not the weight of the words.

I learned that love—so heavy where I come from

it must be solemnized by vows or dragged in by a hearse—here,

is like a broken string of pearls.

I still don’t know if that’s better or worse.

Which Body?

Those bodies were the first I knew. Their stretches,

folds revealed to me in the steam,

where my mother washed my little limbs without shame,

as comfortable as a cuckoo in a nest

in her flesh. Awed, I saw myself written in it.

I share this with American friends like a sacrament.

The first breasts I saw wept.

The first bare belly, a tide.

The first thighs, a conflux.

The gift of the Finnish sauna;

a faithful map of a woman’s past.

Yet, I have spent a wealth in water wanting a body

better suited to an American magazine,

paid time to make it more like a weapon than a well.