POETRY
Our thoughts in exchange for yours.
T
he Exchange is the Weekly’s poetry corner, where a poem or piece of writing is presented with a prompt. Readers are welcome to respond to the prompt with original poems, and pieces may be featured in the next issue of the Weekly.
THIS WEEK'S PROMPT: “IF YOU COULD SPEAK TO A PAST VERSION OF YOURSELF, WHAT WOULD YOU SAY?” THIS COULD BE A POEM OR A STREAM-OFCONSCIOUSNESS PIECE. SUBMISSIONS COULD BE NEW OR FORMERLY WRITTEN PIECES. Submissions can be sent to bit.ly/ssw-exchange or via email to chima.ikoro@southsideweekly.com.
RUBIK'S CUBE BY CLAIRE BERNSTEIN Us women, we hide ourselves well. We are expert hiders. We hide behind every curtain draped before us, because that’s what we have been taught to do. It all begins when the towel envelops us when we’re born, muffling our cries. We hide our voices, tears, dress sizes, pimples, bodily functions, bruises, nerves, sensations, ideas, opinions, thoughts, traumas, but mostly, we hide ourselves. I want to play hide and seek but erase the word hide from the game. I don’t want to know what the word even means, a jumble of thick foreign letters on my tongue. I want my fingernails to be dripping blood from tearing away at those curtains, and I don’t want the overbearing need to get a manicure to fix something broken on my body after it happens.
I want to name my daughter Seek. She’ll be an adventurer. I want to hold her hand as we learn to spell words like “powerful” and “unashamed”. Before I leave the house, I force my scattered pixels to retract into one character in order for me to I want her to fly feet first into a world where participate in this simulation. That is my morning routine. she won’t have to hear boys voices drowning out her beautiful songs. Does anyone else feel like three kids stacked on top of each other in a trench coat and a top hat, tryna I don’t want her to begin hearing the disguise themselves as one adult so they can sneak into a movie theater? catcalls telling her to hide. Does anyone else feel awkward? don’t know how to end conversations in a casual way when you run into someone you know in public? Because hiding is simply the act of I rather walk away too early; it makes me seem like I've got it figured out. waiting to be found. Does anyone else get reminders to remind you of the reminder that was sent as a courtesy to remind We don’t need to be found. you of a message you never saw but somehow opened? We’re already here. Did everyone grow in the same direction? Am I the only one who grew out instead of up? I am trying to understand Claire Bernstein writer and theater artist from Lakeview. You can find her which things are a part of the “neurodiverse package deal” and what is just normal human-stuff, but I'm on Instagram @clairebernstein! too afraid to ask because folks are too busy tryna prove how normal they are. And I can’t blame them because Note To Self BY CHIMA “NAIRA” IKORO
I’m doing the exact same thing.
20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
¬ APRIL 7, 2022
