Excerpt: My Body Didn’t Come Before Me

Follow-up appointment

I had to spell it—h o p e l e ss n e ss
had to hiss my tongue twice, had to pronounce

right, had to say other words—tired empty hollow
like a bottomless bowl of brass, embossed,

till I tasted the bitter melt of Escitalopram
on the lilt of my tongue standing in front

of the pantry at work; till smiling good morning
colleagues watched my eyebrows knit but didn’t

ask what is this medicine? I had to hear it
from the lady doctor, wise in her metallic zipper

coat, saying let us not taper anymore.
Had to hear my name—Kuhu—had to whisper

Kuhu down my throat, had to rub my palm in circles
around my navel, had to feel the bed flatten

underneath my spine, had to hear her say—Kuhu
you take care of yourself.

Snails

My first blood was brown like poop
gone wrong. I didn’t understand my bum
and why the poop kept falling out.

I took to eating more rice. Still the goopey
brown. Flecks some days, then a snail.
Enormous. I’d come home and bend over the sink,

scrubbing with a brush. The white bristles
turning to mud. For four days I took extra bloomers
in my school bag, didn’t breathe much

on the bus back, gripped the seat
when we crossed over speed bumps.
On the fifth day, I showed two snails to Mum.

She stuck in a little white pad,
gave me a stack of old newspaper, and said,
don’t drop them in the toilet. Then she opened

the Illustrated Human Body
and with her right index finger, she traced
what I didn’t think could exist inside me.

What your doctor will tell you:

Forty-five degrees to the right. Thoraco-lumbar.
Cut open. Iron rod. Stitch. Small
Surgery. Milwaukee. Kuch nahin hota hai. Insert. Spine
Still growing. MRI. Pregnancy. Girls grow till seventeen.
Iron. Curved. Rod. Sharma ji hain, vo fitting kar denge.
No known cause. Stop tennis classes.
In eight years when she’s twenty. Brace. No
Known cause. Twenty-two hours. Lacheeli.
Push ribs in place. Phir vo slouch nahin karegi.
L6-L7. Bent-back X-ray. Idiopathic. S shape. Take off your shirt.
Are you wearing a baniyaan? All normal activities. Surgery.
Bohot ladkiyan aati hain. Aap se bhi chhoti-chhoti.

Plunge

 
        The year I decided
I no longer wanted men,

        my body also decided
that it did. I could not rub poems

        against my clit. The words melted
like dead ant heads. Their toes

        curling to the floor. My belly
grew softer and the button

        hung convex. I plucked wild
Syngonium from the park’s sidewalk.

        Digging the hardened mud
with a karchchi. Trying to locate the roots

        whole. In return, the knobbly
mouths threw up sand

        that clung like diamonds
to my clavicle bone, shimmering

        with sweat. When I plunged them
through the mouth of a beer


        bottle, the roots
contracted into each other


        to slide through its neck
before bursting forth—boom

        into the vastness
of its belly. For a second, I thought they

        believed
they were going to open

into air.

Excerpted from My Body Didn’t Come Before Me: Poems by Kuhu Joshi. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2023.