Sometimes I feel empty.

I am as hollow as the caves where my grandparents and I stood years ago.

My body is damp and silent.

I am carved out and rigid.

Rocks occasionally fall.

Drips are heard from a distance.

Sometimes I feel full.

My body is that old black pot

My dad always uses to make tomato sauce from scratch.

The same ingredients each time, but new just the same.

Filled with spice and warmth

Deliciously bubbling over a hot stove.

 

Sometimes I don’t know how to feel at all.

I am led down a hallway I have not visited before.

All of the doorways look the same.

Fear embraces my body like a distant relative at a family reunion

I don’t quite remember her name, but she’s familiar and important.

 

When I was ten years old, my parents got divorced.

They could not give me a clear reason why they separated.

I slept in my mother’s bed and my father’s bed for two years.

 

When I was eighteen years old, I met the lover that changed me.

He looked at me as if I was the moon and he was the darkness of night.

I kissed him and he carried me to bed like in my favorite film.

 

I am now twenty-one years old, and I am drowning and dancing and stuttering with each word I speak.

My heart is beating.

I know I am alive.

But that is all I know.

-Zoe Bommarito