Natalie Turner
Do you feel the honor?
Do you feel the crown? Do you feel it?
Do you feel it kicking
from the inside? Do you hold your paltry hands
to flesh and say “I can’t believe it!
There’s something really in there, something
eating and breathing and growing.”
Do you feel it? Is it breathing
Do you feel it growing? Or is it
scraping cells from your kingdom
Does it harvest you or simply wait
in the tallest tower? Is it bored?
Is it falling asleep in class
where the teacher uses tiny stubs of chalk
turns her back to the room and stitches words together
Does it stitch itself together?
Do you feel it taking notes?
Does it have a pencil and is it using lead
or does it push until your body cannot forget
what was written on its walls?
Do you feel it trying to remember? Does it
remember where it is and who you are?
Does it remember fighting?
Does it remember blood? Your blood
clinging onto your insides for the first time
ripping parts you didn’t know you had
taking souvenirs behind the mother’s back
at a grungy gift shop outside the science museum
Do you feel that? Do you feel the need
to scold it? Does it want you to scold it?
Can you scold it? Can you hold it
after it’s been baptized in evolved menstrual blood
Torn anything it could
Birthed itself as much as you birthed it
Does it hold a grudge?
Do you hold a grudge?
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Natalie Turner is a broadcasting and English student at Western Kentucky University, where her works have appeared in Zephyrus and the Talisman. Her poetry placed 3rd in the 2018 Flo Gault Poetry Contest. She hosts a radio show on Revolution 91.7.