By Pichchenda Bao
I.
Shame is a family recipe
passed down
from mother to dark-skinned daughter.
The secret ingredient,
held close to the chest,
is what passes for love.
No substitutions.
II.
Shame kept me
quiet and out of the sun.
Shame fed
and bathed
and clothed
and sat with me
every day.
Shame drove me
to school and
picked me up.
Shame plucked out
every unruly hair,
then sprouted again
from each itchy bump.
Shame was the default
condition of my body,
my body which
neither I nor boys
were ever supposed
to touch. Though once
an aunty did touch me.
At the public beach.
I was in a hand-me-down swim suit,
its bottom pitted and pilling.
She tapped my vulva
and laughed out loud,
saying it was too big.
I was just nine,
and my mother said nothing.
I learned
to plant my feet
in the shame
of a proliferating body,
to hold still
knowing my place
at the root of shame.
Shame was seed and soil,
sown for my protection.
And so shame became
indistinguishable from love.
Listen, now I get it.
They had meant
for shame to grow
into a stand
of tall trees
to break
the wind.
But how could they
not have known
the roots would trip me up,
make me easy prey?
I want to say
there’s no one
to blame,
that shame
tied their hands
and took possession
of his and made
us all
abandon
our bodies,
and gave us
no choice
but to bear
witness
to shame.
But no.
The truth is
I’ve wanted to leave
every man I’ve ever slept with.
III.
This poem had been written before. And deleted, which was an acceptable revision. But it keeps coming back. The blank page: a confrontation. A teacher once asked me, what are you not saying? And I thought, which vicarious trauma are you hoping to touch? Only, I had given them this poem to read, and now I want it back. I forget that I have already left this poem. This poem is a body I don’t want to look at, but this poem is the irresistible mirror. This body is a poem I carry. Sometimes it is recognized as art, and sometimes is recognized as power, and sometimes recognizes me. Oh right, this is a poem about shame. And in the workshop, someone underlined all the appearances of the word, shame, and the poem became the rungs of an uneven ladder, tricky and unstable. I wrote the poem after Brett Kavanaugh was given a seat on the Supreme Court. But my mother appeared in the poem. And the way she had set me up for a wounded womanhood. To be prey. And I got lost, fleeing the poem.