Standing Naked

Standing Naked

Courtenay Kantanka

“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head and you will strike his heel.” — Genesis 3:15

We used to green together.
I’d walk
and you’d rhododendren,
brush leaves against my legs.
I’d friend your forestry
graze your green with my fingers.
Feel the spikes
of the bromeliads.
Route circles beneath the roots of the walking palms.
You’d rise to whisper among me
your laughters. My skin would prickle
at the joke. And now,
all I hear is wind.

In the earth my fingers are confronted
with indifference.
Steam floats up from where I kneel
I reach to find my face, wet.
I can’t make it stop.
When I sought you for refuge;
fashioned leaves to shield my shame I felt
the shame and
nothing else.
Is this the world I’m left with?

He grabs my hand and wraps
his fingers around mine
as far as they can go. He’s 3.
He asks questions. He eats the dirt.
Dirt. It’s what I call you now. Dirt.
Him and me, we walk together
kicking our feet watching dust, little dirt
form clouds then fall. His hand shoots out.
He grabs a handfull of bush. I can’t recall
her name, but I wince.

He pulls hard.
You are silent.
Not a sound.
Did it hurt?
I stop too, listen.

“I’m a bad boy, Mom,” come the words I wish I never knew.
I watch him fondle the torn leaves, listen with him to them
rustle between his fingers. Watch him watch them shuffle
between his fingers.

“I’m a bad boy.”
“No!” My mouth. It spurts.
“You can’t be bad. You are going to fix it.”
“What I broke…”
His eyes, rings of bark, surprised.
I crouch to meet them with mine.
Grip my hands around his shoulders.
“You have to fix it. You have to crush
What the serpant spoke into being. You
have to crush the serpent. He lies.”

We stare there. Him at me. Me to him.
I break gaze first and stand; step forward, turn and
reach backward for his hand. His fingers find mine
and wrap them. Again, we walk together
In the thick of the leaves, pushing aside branches
That I used to know personally.

---

Courtenay Kantanka
Poet 

Courtenay Kantanka is an MFA candidate at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She has been published in What I Knew Before I Knew by Pudding House and 1619 Speaks: An Anthology of African-American Poetry. You can follow her journey on Instagram @mrscboogie_1. 

Photography by Diana Sparkle