I DO NOT BELONG TO YOU
poems by Melissa Jennings
I DO NOT BELONG TO YOU
debate me all you want,
whether I was carved from your rib
or birthed from your 9 months of breathing.
I am whole but I am complete.
I have stitches in places, but that’s because I grow too fast
sometimes.
you can’t cut me down, I was not something that you planted.
I am not for you to harvest and decorate.
my roots are too deep for you to ever reach.
•
THIS HOUSE IS NOT A HOME
(after Charlotte Perkins Gilman)
I am haunted; the past trapped inside me.
doors slam every night,
the ceiling unpeels and I am undone by this 3am darkness.
gravity thickens, and the world is suddenly sitting on my
shoulders.
my bones are hallways and alleyways for the past.
when I say my hands are going numb,
I mean this body is trying to reject all feeling.
even if that feeling is nothing.
I dig into myself,
my fingernails, gravestones.
I can feel the funeral in my hands.
it is a reminder that I am haunted,
a reminder of ripped wallpaper,
and feeling unsafe in my own skin.
•
PERSEPHONE
don’t unearth the person I was.
that body is already decomposing.
those bones of hate disintegrating into dust,
from the dirt, the seasons changed.
you are dragging up the bones, trying to
breathe life into something that no longer exists.
but you forget, you buried me.
did you expect me to live through that?
I may have eaten the pomegranate for you,
but I will never let winter find a home in me again.
•
WELCOME TO GENDER
Please select from the following options:
GENDER AS:
☐ Fighting the patriarchy
☐ New oceans under my skin
☐ Comet streaks across my arms and legs
☐ Electricity in the room and everyone is under your spell
☐ Side-eyeing me because I look vaguely threatening
☐ A vague threat
☐ A threat in your morning routine
☐ A subway carriage
☐ A grenade
☐ You
Melissa Jennings (they/them) lives with their cat, Dora, in the sometimes sunny but always vibrant city of Glasgow, in Scotland. They are currently studying towards an MA in English Literature at the University of Glasgow. Melissa is an avid reader and a writer of many genres - poetry is just the first step.