Katherina Magdelena, a pioneer who married her stepfather at fifteen & died from childbirth at seventeen I keep trying to write my way to you what you were you were seventeen you always will be the book of your life ended in birth delivering the son of your step father your husband & step father is my great great grandfather but I am not your daughter you were the second or third wife depending on who does the counting & you never knew the fourth or fifth wife who dominates the documents that mention the wives she had the most children & I am one of these children polygamy has made our relationship & polygamy has made our relationship strange what are we to each other there are no pictures of you so I try to picture you as you are or as you were frozen in seventeen growing up all I wanted was to be seventeen & now I can’t remember why I do not believe in our sort of resurrection but I picture it or I used to my grandmother would touch my hair & say she would have it in the resurrection thickness she wanted matter so dense your hand catches going through it what age do I imagine a body at the resurrection not seventeen at seventeen I wanted love so badly I let my boyfriend take more & more & then I begged his forgiveness for his hands for my body I am working on this not being sorry for my body I am sorry for how your body was raised & used & died how lonely you must have felt in it
This poem was nominated for a 2021 Pushcart Prize.
(Photo by Gwen Mamanoleas on Unsplash)
