This Body Will Not Carry
/Annie Cigic
I go on long drives, childless-
a loud peace. An empty backseat,
ignoring seatbelts & airbags. No bodies
traveling at the same speed as mine.
No questions about the sky-why the clouds hang
low & heavy some days. No one to count
the broken white lines or ask why the roads light up
at dark. From city to shoreline to mountain, I drive until I see
barren landscapes-hurricanes won’t touch
this wasteland.
Author’s Note: To be completely honest, this poem came to existence after an abusive ex-partner told me he wished I had twins. I was trying to form a new relationship with my body at the time because so much emphasis was placed on my body and using it to have children, as if that was its sole purpose. In the poem, the speaker is at peace with an absence that still weighs heavy in certain moments. The peace is an ear-splitting silence—it announces itself. The body is being juxtaposed with nature, and at some points in the poem, the body is being disregarded, representing a sense of disappointment. The poem itself is a moment of peace interrupted by what can slip through the cracks.
Annie Cigic is a Ph.D. candidate in the Rhetoric and Writing Studies Program at BGSU in Ohio. Her work can be found in Into the Void, Gordon Square Review, Driftwood Press, Rappahannock Review, and elsewhere. Her poems "Afterlife of a Dumped Body" and "An Exploited Body" were nominated for a 2021 and 2022 Pushcart Prize.
