THE FIRST TIME YOU LEARN YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR OWN

you cry listening to fka twigs

on your bike ride home

something about being unloved, the sky

wraps herself blood orange you wake up sixteen

neon anger over a bruised skyscraping whisper

in her ear like why don't i do it for you

your body stopped belonging

on the tiled floor of your mother’s bathroom

you still itch for the years when you were only afraid

of sugaring yourself against the pacific

your body stopped belonging behind a thumping

door, gravity could no longer claim, you thought

of her pearls sewn into your lips, three days ago

your body stopped belonging

name your ribs an august lightning storm

your jawbone a peach from the farmer’s market

name your spine the dead boy you found under

a car in yosemite your throat the bottle

of fireball screaming across the road your hair

the snake tattoo on his back

Sydney Vogl (she/they) is a queer poet who lives and writes in San Francisco. In 2020, they were chosen as the poetry fellow for the Martha's Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing. Her work, which was nominated for Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net 2020, has been published in Entropy, Hobart and Kissing Dynamite. They currently serve as a poetry editor for The San Franciscan Magazine, an assistant poetry editor for Invisible city, and work as an educator to Bay Area Youth.

Note: This poem contains a line from FKA Twigs’ song “Cellophane”