What The Body Knows Poem by Tishani Doshi

The body dances in a darkened room
Turning itself inside out
So that skin can face the light in fractures,
Slip like shadow through skeleton walls,
Begin to cry — really — to scream
About the tarnished weight of dreams.

This has been a drift after all.
The body returns to its original place,
Moves from one to the other — creeps —
Tries to flee itself, lone trunk,
Searches for remain of bark,
Hints of what it used to be.

Perhaps an ocean framed in bone,
A pair of birds in early white,
Flying from this dream to the next
Fixing the gaps between memory
And reverberation; binding spine
On vein, feather to lesion.

The body collects its wandering parts,
Leans back through layers
Of thickening water; roots above
Boughs beneath, feet caving in to wonder.
It’s how the world reverses itself,
How the distant sky finds the earth.