I hang on to loose things
that always fall away
like another man’s body breaking into a tale.
The first time I learnt a man,
we both lost sound to echoes
bouncing on carefree skins.
My body has a way of stammering across my thighs and breasts,
his hands found their way to my stretch marks,
he said one looked like a trapezium.
I laughed and said
“I hope it traps you”.
A body is a collection of lines
coming from different places
I am sculpted like a tilted equation
what’s on the right is not equal to the left.
I count my breasts and something is missing
I find it on a weighing scale,
bodies are variables
always talking, always changing, always different.
I count the stretch marks
another man translates it with his fingers
it stretches, I shrink.
I have a meltdown in my bathroom
I cried with the water.
After the water left
I look into the mirror,
it called me blessed
I go to work.
Back home, my mother awaits a body.
Adetutu Adediran
Adetutu Adediran is a phoneographer and poet from Nigeria. She currently studies at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology where she majors in Pure and Applied Chemistry. Her poetry focuses on love, female identity, and loss. She’s a joint winner of PIN’s ten days poetry challenge in 2019 and the winner of Spring Literary Movement Poetry Contest in 2019. She’s currently working on a collection of poems that seeks to explore the diverse functions of bodies.
This entry appeared in The Memory Issue