Mundane Anatomy

Imagine this body half raw and half rotten,
Imagine this body half destroyed and half destroyer,|
half beaten, bitten and half voracious. 
Imagine   it’s half like this and half despite this.
Imagine half of this body halved, 

and halved,

and halved, through generations. 

Imagine half of this body is huge and the other half is hidden inside of it. 
Imagine this body’s skin color has blended through the years,
Imagine it is trigueña — the color of wheat,
Imagine it tokenized.

Imagine this body dances to many rhythms yet it is easily paralyzed. 

Now fill that body with viscera,
And fill those viscera with yellow butterflies and cucarrones mierderos — the poop rolling beetles

Fighting with each other
Feeding the stomach angry and upset,
Asking for others to calm down,
Sending signals to the heart, raising it aware, making the jaw tense.

Imagine that heart pumping in blue blood
and pumping out dark blood.
Imagine that heart inflicting pain and feeling the pain.
Imagine that heart falling in love with the pain,
Perhaps somewhere in Stockholm. 

Imagine that victimized heart reaching out to the brain, reminding it that together they are moral, 
morally superior.

Now separate that brain in two pieces, right and 
wrong. 
Imagine the half that’s right bigger than the half that’s wrong
and place the half that’s wrong in the little body you left inside. 
Take trauma and hide it there too. You will be tempted to hide fear in there as well but fear is too strong, so make it muscles.

Imagine training those muscles
With fear of rejection,
With lack of recognition,
With fear of scarcity,
With scarcity,
And fear if losing control. 

Now, turn the body over.
Imagine its back, 
it’s long
And it turns away from pain.
Do abstain from imagining its ass, it’s simply smart. 

There is no body without hands,
In your imagination, por supuesto
One hand with a finger that points at others with ease and shakes when attempting to point at itself. 
See that finger shaking?
It’s shaking with the memories of privilege at the expense of others.

Don’t forget to imagine the other hand. 
That is the one here, writing this — the draft by hand
The one that has taken the watch off,
The one that is writing slowly,
The one that is stopping here
Opening up. 

by Adriana Santamaría
2023