Survivor by Anna Leah (20,Windsor)

​TW: mental health & self-harm
“My hair was kept so short, combed flat when wet. I never knew my hair
was wavy until I was nearly twenty-two and never went outside with wet
and uncombed hair until I was twenty-eight.”
-Kazim Ali, “Home”

---

I.
Forget everything when the wind pushes your thin skirt too
close against your legs or you catch a glimpse of a mirror and gag
or the maybe-not-friend lifts the polaroid and her fake smile and her shiny teeth and
 
you want to tear off everything that encumbers:
hips, breasts, the tips of your toenails.
The bulge below your belly button.
The lobe of the left ear.
You shave away the top layer
of skin. See the purple muscle glistening
underneath. Firm. Pure.
 
Tell yourself you are less
foreign when you are voiceless. Then stop
talking. You will remove
yourself from the struggle.
 
You no longer talk to your family. The clothes you wear: a tent
in shades of gray and dirty. In the end
you realize the last thing that needs to go is your mind.
No more unbeautiful thoughts. End the nervous laughter,
the constant search, the nights
when you lay awake too late, thinking.
Nothing will be left unpurified.
 
II.
No longer within the realm of language, I dialed the number and
cried while I waited for them to pick up. I wanted to hear
myself speak. I wanted to know that I could still
manufacture a thought. Slapped the mud into a ball, rolled it
 
in my hands, pressed it down. Threw it away, then,
frantic, searched for it in the grass. Picked it up, tried
again. My hands covered in dirt, grass-stained knees, but
I was done being un-valuable. I was done
 
speaking to the dead. I rolled
my whole self in the mud. Lifted my hands to the sky and
danced with stiff hips. Smelled my sweat. I fell
asleep in the grass, damp pooling beneath my thighs.
 
Please don’t hate me, I whisper to myself
when I wake up. I’m doing what I can.

​AnnaLeah Lacoss is a twenty year old writer from Windsor, CT. Majoring in English and Global Studies at Hope College, her poetry has previously been published in her school's literary magazine, Opus. Her literary inspirations include Toni Morrison, Mahmoud Darwish, and Pablo Neruda.