Atlas

A poem bySamira Jha about disease.

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I am just as terrified at the idea of our fingertips touching as you are of shaking my hand

I worry about your loose grip and quick release

Equating it to the white that is etched on my skin

I hear you ask your mother whether the marks that stain my skin are ones that can travel to your body with the slightest of contact we shared

My mother tells me I’m not sick

Yet the needles that are jabbed into the crooks of my arms

And the pills I struggle to swallow suggest differently

The word disease stares back tat me

When my curiosity betrays the promise I made to my mother

To not search for the definition of the word that seems to plague my body

My mother tells me I’m beautiful

But tears stain her cheeks at 3 am when she lies awake mourning the loss of her child’s youth

My mother repeats the insignificance of my disease

When I bring it up on the dinner table on a Wednesday evening

However they’re unable to explain the hushed voices that discuss innumerable cures behind closed doors at 12 am,

An hour after she kisses me goodnight and turns off the night light,

The thoughts wash over me like waves as I compare my body to the atlas perched on my father’s study,

Tracing the continents,

Wondering when the world will rest at my feet.

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Written By Samira Jha