My body felt haunted. I had pain in my neck. My arm hurt, like a nerve was pinched.
My left knee was twisted and I had an ache in my side. My jaw felt tight. I pointed
out my sunken chest, my left shoulder higher than my right. Sometimes it was hard
to hold myself up, and sitting was uncomfortable. My lower back hurt when I walked
for a long time.
“Maybe it’s because I’m tall,” I said. “I have to
slump. Everything is too low; chairs, tables, sinks, counters, even car seats. The
world is designed for people five foot four. Is it really true that you don’t
cause the pain?”
His hands worked like a potter. He said his mother had made hats in the garment
district. There was a dried out snakeskin on the wall. Mexican music played from
a radio next door. His thick fingers dug deep down into my flesh, releasing the
glue that held me together. He asked me to make small subtle movements. I lifted
my knee. Moved my foot up and down. Rocked my pelvis. Slid my elbow out to the side
and in again. “Breathe into it,” he said. And I did. “Invite my
fingers in, picture this melting, spreading out, dissolving.”
I rode the pain through dense distorted fascia and fell into dark holes. I shook
from my core as my right ankle remembered iron shackles twisting and rubbing against
raw black skin.
My feet screamed away the memory of eight-hour days in high-heeled shoes; aching
arches and evenings spent disco dancing in six-inch green and gold snakeskin
platforms.
When he started humming “Go Tell Aunt Rhody”—he said he didn’t
know why—I wept for the dead gray goose and my lost childhood. His elbow pressed
into my sacrum and I remembered the year my spine grew four crooked inches and there
was another divorce. I found my stepfather hiding in my neck.
The taste of Novocain seeped from my jaws. My mother melted out of my face.
Afterwards, I went home and ate—mostly meat. I went to bed and dreamt of the
time, before the ghosts, when I decided to grow this body tall from the inside out.
work has appeared in print and online in riverSedge, The Best of Vine Leaves
Literary Journal 2014, Red Savina Review, Southwestern American Literature, Lumina,
Prime Number Magazine Editors’ Selection Volume 2, and many other literary
journals. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee recognized in “Notable Stories”
in the Million Writers Award 2013; a shortlisted finalist in the Summer Literary
Seminars Unified Literary Contest in 2009, 2011, and 2013; and was awarded writing
residencies from Vermont Studio Center, Rancho Linda Vista arts community, and Starry
Night Retreat/Artist Residency, as well as a grant from the Barbara Deming
Memorial fund.
Ms. Powers holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles where
she is adjunct faculty. She completed her formal art training at the California
Institute of the Arts and has worked professionally as a painter, actor, and dancer
in New York, Los Angeles, and Mexico City.
