Ashley Hajimirsadeghi: The Doctor Said
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
self-portrait in winter
It is January & I have not learned
hunger yet. I sat in front of the dirty,
cracked mirror & ate lily of the valleys,
threw up their poisonous stems.
Once, a childhood bully told me
if you ate the buds of flowers,
you’d vomit bouquets. I only saw
the plastic of the ties that bound the
stems & my reflection rippling
in the toilet bowl. A still life
as wind. Weak wind, the kind that
sputters heat through the vents,
then goes quiet. It is a new year
& I am still cold, trembling
under flannel sheets. During hot
showers, I rip thorns & petals
from my navel—sometimes
I cry. Sometimes I laugh.
Sometimes I eat again.
On New Year’s Eve, the doctor said
she could not properly diagnose my endometriosis,
said they’d have to cut me open to find out
the truth. I lingered in the room long after,
until they asked me to leave, then cried
in the car. I wish I could write myself love
poems instead of becoming ashes. To color myself
in with rose petals and pomegranate seeds. To strip,
look myself in the mirror, and draw my body in
constellations. Ashley, no cartographer
can draw you a map for this place. Remember
the body is a blade. That when you stumble
in the dark, swallow what remains of your name,
there will be laughter, shimmering
like stained glass at dawn.
anxiety attack
bite my tongue / until blood trickles out the corners / my therapist says i can’t / write poems /
when i get like this / i fish for words / but can only quote old / bob dylan songs / & les misérables / hands trembling / smearing red lipstick / in half moon crescents / an old édith piaf record playing “la vie en rose” / she never knew no persian girl / who presses / pomegranate seeds / to her lips / i never knew no persian girl / who was anxious / baba always said / i was crazy / mentally gone / while shelling pomegranates / into a mixing bowl / intended for cake / i think i can’t breathe / where does the blood start and the lipstick begin / la vie en rose / victor hugo never wrote a solution for this / bob dylan quotes / never told me how live / with anxiety / give me a history / give me lust / and i’ll break it for you / is this / the way i love myself / or is it fear? / someone tell / me / what to do / can’t take it / no more / baby girl / think i’m bleeding out
Ashley Hajimirsadeghi’s work has appeared in Into the Void Magazine, Mud Season Review, Rust + Moth, and The Shore, among others. She currently reads for Mud Season Review and EX/POST Magazine, is the Playwriting Director’s Apprentice at New Perspectives Theatre Company, and was a Brooklyn Poets Fellow. Her debut chapbook cartography of trauma is forthcoming from dancing girl press. Her website is http://ashleyhajimirsadeghi.squarespace.com/
