Saltwater Dishes, My Body Betrays Me, There’s Death Between My Pants, Apparently
by Ronin Hernandez
Young Women’s Leadership Academy
My name is Ronin Hernandez, I am a high school student at Young Women's Leadership Academy and my pronouns are She/They. I've been writing poetry since I was middle school and hope to continue writing as a screenwriter and author once I graduate college.
Saltwater Dishes
They say “gut out the fish”
So I imagine carnage and slaughter
Looking at my sushi and my mothers sashimi
I really am my fathers daughter
I wonder how different reality would be
If we all knew what’s like to drown in salty seas
Boiled red like lobsters - baked in the sun
Or munched to death like shrimp
Have our heads cut off
Insides sliced clean
Our eyes and eggs, someone’s tasty treat
Snap our limbs apart
Because crab tastes better when broken
Licking our lips covered in tartar sauce,
Hush Puppy this:
We are sicker than the sea
My Body Betrays Me
I am sick to my stomach
I cannot keep anything down
I feel it my veins that creeping feeling
That crawling pain up my arms
That guck stuck in my throat
The itch deep within my skin
The spit I’m too dry to swallow
I am despicable for being this sickly
If i could I would
Grab it from inside my chest,
Pull it out slowly so it hurts
So I can learn how to breath
Without this sickness
Deep inside me
There’s Death Between My Pants, Apparently
Gender is the bloody
and the flesh that burns
It is also the body that serves
The body isn't real
either is gender
and believing in god
won’t change how badly
it feels to be called by
“your” name
and when I turn to god
and when he says he loves me
for the way I am,
What will you all do
Kill him as well?
