Editor's note: This poem has received a nomination for the 2023 Pushcart Prize: Rented Body by Janavi Held I live uneasily in my rented body wondering when the surrogate season of shadows will pass. Perishable memories I have clutched within this rented vessel; so many forsaken treasures slip like blinded angels through the atoms of my rented jail. They do not land on rock; they come from my bones like a hurricane, as my rented flesh is uplifted by hunger and money as the two parts of my soul search for eyes, for the waterfall, for the forget-me-nots to thaw the frozen atmosphere of tears, for the pale cathedral of doubt to replace its dead shadow with a constant heart. In my rented body I climb titanic, twisting stairs, casting my own shadow on the torn remnants of these days, and mortal fibers, I’ve torn them from my rented heart, those gentle atoms living as the symbol of silence, of forever, of the Master of all destroyed things. ~This poem ori
Women's Spiritual Poetry