Wicked were you once,

Sri Kodakalla

the way you torture yourself
Insistent ponderings of what if and what was
Losing track of time in diligent notation of cuts on your skin
Soft flesh,
The smoothest and gentlest
Loved by so many, yet poured into again and again

I recognize your persistence 
The obsessive nature of your preturbations
asking the same questions
Hoping to get different answers
Faking facts
Slipping them into ziploc bags labeled “Evidence”
You’ll come back to it

With time, you reinforce
Validating falsehoods
Binding tighter the chains, connecting you to your master
It is to be your ill-fated demise, you say

I counter this—as I watch you repeat rituals, seeking penance
Must you persecute yourself in order to achieve salvation?

Rite out the source—the demon that consumes you
Stretch it out bare, 
And dry it in the sun, till taut and tough
Withered and brittle
No longer shy
Returned back to the primal form

Then come forward, lather it in the residue of your conviction— 
What remains of you
I deny not that you can— 
With tenderness and forgiving
Present it into the finest silk
Languishing to be touched 

Wicked were you once, but 
you are a woman of great sinew
Watch as you create new passages
Trickling down of river paths, 
Transcending into waterfalls
For it is said, the meek shall inherit the Earth
But perhaps it isn’t for the quiet,
Rather the insightful, the observant—
those who with patience, Will into existence
change

Sri Kodakalla (she/they) is an artist, writer, and arts organizer based in Charlottesville, VA. As an advocate for the creative and equitable growth of BIPOC artists, she works as Director of Programming & Engagement at Second Street Gallery, co-director of the Feminist Union of Charlottesville Creatives, and co-founder of a radical art/writing publication MALA LECHE. Her personal work explores immigrant identity and disparities of ownership through non-linear storytelling, evoking mysticism and surrealism in the seemingly mundane.

Originally published May 2022 in poiesis 3.1 by w the trees.