NELLE 9 | 2026
—What Octavio said
el cuerpo es para usarlo he said delicious directive i thought
my body an activated archive my mother said i danced before i
walked and what joy there was in running as close to flying as i
could come until my chest said soccer is not your destiny and the
brilliance of moving through saltwater and freshwater and all water
body become all weightlessness all power what it was to dance
my bare feet on bare earth and everything a drumming and
everything a spiraling and the joy of laying on the earth as the
thunderstorm raged every particle of me humming in welcome and still
the joy of waking stretching every liquid limb against soft sheets
the joy of breathing deep and grateful the prickling memory
of hot breath on my skin the animal comfort of one body moving against
another with another to another and also the animal contentment of
the body alone in its burrow all the freedoms of
solitude
el cuerpo es para usarlo he said and i thought my father would have said the
body was for working like hands were for working like
backs were meant for burdens eyes meant for eagle awareness
feet for forcing beyond the weakness of flesh step after step
hour after hour that the body was for toil and sweat and struggle
that the body was for hunger and its denial pain and its
denial suffering and its denial power and power’s dominion over
everything it could force i wonder what my mother would have said
my mother whose body was labeled motherbody and
wifebody and so i think sometimes that’s why she went away
somewhere deep inside where no one could touch her
where she didn’t belong to anyone
el cuerpo es para usarlo he said and i thought how innocent that
sounds it asssumes the body is not in pain assumes the body is
able assumes the body is strong assumes the body is beautiful
seems to say the body is made wholly for pleasure made me
think i have reveled in my body and i have longed to have no body at
all there are so many ways in which we are not taught that
girlbodies are our own so many ways we are shown that
womanbodies are not our own how very few women i know who
are not carrying stories of violation abuse violence who have not
made all their choices in that knowing who are not aware of each
word each touch and the threat of danger there are grey spaces in my
mind memories that are lost that i lost that i never need to
recover i know i can’t make the body forget
el cuerpo es para usarlo he said and i think of what other bodies
carry my body carries songs and stories my body loves the wind more
than anything sometimes i think what different lives different bodies
must live and who would i be in a different body and perhaps it
takes fifty years of life to finally say i would not wish for a more
beautiful body if it was a silent body a body that didn’t hold stories
and tell stories and birth stories if it didn’t love the wind and
find the thunder glorious if it lived some other life without the
love this body has lived if it was a body whose every cell
didn’t sing live live live and fight fight fight and i think it
takes fifty years of life to say i wouldn’t choose anything else
fifty years to give thanks for a body that would never
name itself fear or ingratitude
el cuerpo es para usarlo he said and i think of how so many people
seem to not live in their bodies at all they hardly even seem to
know they are bodies they live and they walk in sleeping bodies
and in bodies they choose to numb choose to silence bodies
they never allow to fall or fly bodies that never set them free
and i think of my body this humble body for whom each
sense and the ceaseless intertwining of all the senses is a doorway
is a prayer is a portal to transcendances small and large
passing and eternal that can and can’t be put into words
el cuerpo es para usarlo he said