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“In the Bible Belt, where I grew up, people looked to scripture for guidance. I tried, but Leviticus damns deformities: the book warns against allowing the deformed to blight the priesthood, listing among the deformed those who have ‘a crooked back.’ Modern translations made the prohibition even clearer by rendering that with the specificity of “he who has scoliosis,” so I turned to other texts.”

Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza on turning to literature after being diagnosed with scoliosis.
via theparisreview

Sycamores

I came from a place with a hole in it,
my body once its body, behind a beard of hair.
And after I emerged, all dripping wet,
little drops came out of my eyes, touching its face.
I kissed its mouth; I bit it with my gums.
I lay on it like a snail on a cup,
my body, whatever its nature was,
revealed to me by its body. I did not know
I was powerless before a strange force.
I did not know life cheats us. All I knew,
nestling my head in its soft throat pouch,
was a hard, gemlike feeling burning through me,
like limbs of burning sycamores, touching
across some new barrier of touchability.

—Henri Cole, “Sycamores”
Art Credit Emilie Halpern via Booooooom

(Source: theparisreview)