I come up drenched, sputtering names.
Reborn a child that doesn’t mind, I don’t know my names.
The ink of my body swells & recedes,
my mouth practicing forms, the shapes of names.
I think of how I am still bleeding, purging every man
who has ever touched me & whispered names.
I imagine if I had his baby & it was like him. I might also want it
gone, to exist without names.
All the women came to see if I was awake.
They wanted to hold me & count my fingers with names.
I had to hold my breath & I did, God why
did you make our ridges recognizable, fingerprints or names.
The women fished Paula out the wishing well. Skin, kidneys, hair follicles,
everything but names.
Every Season the City Drowns Me by Paula Gil-Ordoñez Gomez| Poetry Reed Diffuser
Paula Gil-Ordoñez Gomez is a Mexican-Spanish-American poet based in Brooklyn. Her writing has been published in HAD, trampset, X-R-A-Y, and Rejection Letters, among others. She is a 2024 Periplus Fellow.
