I Belong

“I belong to quick, futile moments of intense feeling. Yes, I belong to moments. Not to people.” – Virginia Woolf

I belong to your fingertips when they whisper my skin to sleep

I belong in that hallowed exhale you release
when we’ve just met each other for the first time
in a long while

I belong inside the hours I spend
in your presence
at our kitchen table discussing
this love and
this family
your back to the window
the city melting behind you
over dinner

I belong in that spiral that sits inside of my screams
when you break your promises

I belong at your office when you choose your vacation days and
get first word of your promotions

I belong to your mother and your father
because I honor them as my own

–

I belong inside the music halls and the temples and the schools and the theaters
beseeching my community to rise

I belong nestled among
the privileged and the disenfranchised
the white and the black
the money and the holes-in-the-wall
for the sake of my public interest work
for the sake of the public
for the sake of our people

I belong in the courtrooms
toggling between compromise and combat

I belong in the palms
of the hands
of my immigrant parents

I belong in the flames of
those memories of
those times
I did wrong by you

I belong to this body
tortured
starved
disgraced
though it may have been

–

Sometimes, I belong here
– on paper –
when
for some reason
I cannot speak

this burden

© 2019 Sarah E.

published in The Menstrual in May 2019.