After Zoe Saldana defends playing Nina Simone in her biopic by saying “For so many years, nobody knew who the [fuck] she was. She is essential to our American history. As a woman first, and only then as everything else.”

I looked at my Aunt Sarah skin;
my stay out the sun-
You already an eclipse- face.
Body an automatic rejection letter
erasure waiting to happen.

I birth a child, and the wet wound never closes.
My mother diagnoses postpartum casually
as if saying – mail is here, and your name is on it.
Explains the drilling is nothing I asked for, overripe nerves happen sometimes.