Physical Therapy

My body wants

a safe place where it can speak,

and a listener, who will listen,

without judgement.

A place where it can express

the diversity of its pain

without sounding like a chant on repeat.

A place where its organs, and many parts

can be raucous and discordant,

without being admonished, because body parts

must be operational,

and not heard.

A place

where it is safe

to feel strange, and estranged,

stretched out, and alien,

from hosting, growing,

nourishing, and nurturing

new humans,

without being brushed off, dismissed,

because the unforgiving metamorphoses back and forth,

back and forth, but never quite the same ever again,

happen to all females who reproduce.

Stop whining.

A place

where my body can experience

anxiety induced insomnia,

and medication induced somnolence,

be awake or asleep at all the wrong times,

without being told it is a total and complete failure.

I cannot be this safe place.

I cannot be the listener.

I cannot be unjudgmental.

I don't know how.

I dislike my body too much from

being trapped in it.

My well of compassion

for my dysfunctional

prison cell

is dry.