From “The Unhealed World” by Elizabeth Frost – Poems

I decide to give my body a name. Jane. Jean. Janet. I’ve never liked names that start with such a vague sound, oscillating between consonant variations like bowling pins. But I need to accept something that never bothered me. As a child, I loved the game of telephone, one mistake after another, the transformation, the joy at the end when the secret of the last whisperer was revealed. Incense, insect, instant. Get wet, trench, turn out. Language, languor, melancholy. We played on the edge of feelings, pretended losses where there were none, turned the privilege of hearing into a game. One erasure, another erasure. Janet – unsecured, unmoored, unwell – time to mobilize.

Copyright © 2024 Elizabeth Frost. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 28, 2024 by the Academy of American Poets.