Engolindo um fio

she was anesthetized from sunday to tuesday,
a six year old body in a bed, in rural Rio,
and waking up she could tell something intimate,
was lost
and she knew.
and she had warned them when the pain began
with her strong, small intuition
and this can be what it feels like
to be a Black girl in a white world
a white world in your Brown country
where the surgeons look like you
but still can’t tell you
what went wrong
I felt her pain like it was mine

couldn’t get the thing back by herself
the thing it had taken
so they put her in rooms
that were supposed to help her concentrate on

(not having)

the thing
some kind of badly drawn map
being lucid, a reminder
that for all the truths she knew
the lack of whatever it was
would diminish them
that giving it up
saved her life
made it impossible to be heard
made her brilliance unbeknownst
I felt her pain like it was mine

coitada
erosion of trust
coitada
if only she had been born somewhere else
coitada
if only they had listened sooner

how do you approach a world, amazing, but with something already taken
how do you approach a world, amazing, but they don’t see you
I felt her pain like it was mine