I've got high-rises up my legs
A double-carriageway down my spine
Every inch of me is occupied by someone else.
You live in the suburbs behind the shell of my ear, on the soft skin you'd kiss to wake me.
It's a long, busy drive along my arms to reach the warmth of my palms. My grandfather lives there, cradled by the soft skin of my fingers which held his tight in the hours he was dying.
You'd need to get the bus to visit my mother. She's out on the coast of my scalp, wrapped in the ocean of my hair which she used to brush each day from child till early teenhood with such affection I'd let her do it for hours, even if she never did it right.
Take the trainline all the way down my back along the slant of my torso and the rise of my knees and don't get off until you reach the final stop. H will meet you there. I loved him through childhood and he's got a nice apartment stretched out along the soles of my feet which used to beat the concreted streets of town we'd each race through together in youth.
I started off small at birth, a township in my teens, but now I'm bustling. Though even as I grow, even as space becomes few and far between I make sure that there's always enough room for one more person to make a home in me.

© Leila Kadar