Jovita Widjaja, Aster
Before the Body
What comes before
The body’s rising?
An unnamable distance
Having been born alone
Having made the journey through blood on my own
I want to say it was love
my mother and father
What drove their bodies
to create another
I grasp for knowing and pull back
A chaotic wind, its unruly air
What was before, before?
In the beginning I had no name to carry
The weight of death
my father left formless
The body’s rough science attempts to fill in the gaps
An attempt to lift shame
stuck in the body’s craw to reach back to a beginning
I try to re-member
that which cannot be re-membered
Fracture living up to its name
What comes before, before?
I settle on love or something greater than the sum of loss
The potential of will The body’s rising
a living testament
The strange spell of knowing, its faceless want
to chart those unknowable places
Its cartography of flesh that brings me closest to
the untouched terrain of the body’s rising what comes before, before.