Diannely Antigua

STONING

He found it on Wallis Sands Beach, the stone 
for me. It fit in my closed palm like a tiny planet
of grey storms—the darker grey turning to lighter
grey, then brown swirling on its crannied surface. 
When dropped on the table, it didn’t bounce but landed 
on its back, my pet cat in reverse. It had what 
I called the potential for smooth, the potential 
for polish by worry. I am not a stone, but strangers
will still create a shore so they can say they plucked me 
from the sand. I used to be perched on a desk. I used to be 
décor. The stone-giver is gone and so is the chipped 
front tooth, his pursed lips—the corner of his mouth 
the place where words escaped. The stone-giver 
is gone, and my therapist says to celebrate 
survival. When he threatened to punch the wall, 
I celebrated not being the wall. I stopped 
eating, my belly smooth all the way down where I stopped 
touching myself. I stopped watching the milfs moan 
on screens. And I became a screen, pixels constructing 
my face, my eye—nothing more than a cluster
of black squares. I became something to watch 
left dangerously unwatched when my hand became 
the stone he found, when it collided with my cheek.

BLESSING THE BABY

When my upstairs neighbor invites me to her baby shower,
I feel guilty about forgetting to bring in my recycling bins,
again. I am a bad neighbor, but she’s going to be a mother
so she’ll have to practice forgiveness on someone first. Usually,
I’m a people pleaser. I am a people. I was born
with all of the people I could ever create inside me. I try
to forgive them—their dirty handprints on my skirt, their towels
left on the bathroom floor. We blessed the baby
while we tied around our wrists one long, red string.
For a moment, the string connected us—wives, mothers,
and me, neither—until it didn’t, until the scissors severed
us, made a bracelet of the blood string. I told the baby,
I give you this wrist. The world will break all your blessings
if it wants, and believe me, baby, most of the time, it wants.

DIARY ENTRY #34: EPIGENETICS

It’s been eight years
and the ancestors in me are still
burdened. I don’t know if I am gentle with them.
I reheat the coffee in the microwave,
find gratitude when they take what’s theirs
and leave the rest. There will always be
scarcity—less food, less Klonopin—
which is to say I own a legacy of fear.
Tonight, another grandmother is dying,
and I cannot heal her. But I line up
my idols like bruises on my belly
and perform a nostalgic ritual:
I shower with my clothes on
like I did as a girl with a man
who wanted to be my father,
when I became a little bird, helpless
to affection. Did he make me
a good monster or a bad one?
I can keep my cage clean,
wipe my mouth with my thumb.

Double Yolk extends gratitude to Poem-A-Day & Northwest Review, which first featured “Blessing the Baby” & “Diary Entry #34: Epigenetics” (respectively).