Body, Rewritten

by Gloria Ogo

They taught me to name my body

by what it lacked

as if absence were the truest form of truth.

But I have learned to measure myself

in constellations instead.

Every scar, a planet.

Every brace, a ring of Saturn.

Every pill, a prayer orbiting

some soft interior moon.

The world says: overcome.

But I say: become.

I say the revolution is not in walking again,

but in staying still

and making stillness holy.

My wheelchair croons like a hymn.

My cane speaks in the language of balance.

Every breath I take is a small rebellion

against a universe that once forgot

to make room for me.

Do not call me broken.

Call me remade

the way rivers reshape stone,

the way stars collapse

only to shine harder in the after.

I do not need to be healed.

I need to be heard,

held in the chorus of all bodies

that bend light differently

each of us

a revolution in motion.

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Gloria Ogo is an American-based Nigerian writer with several published novels and poetry collections. Her work has appeared in Eye to the Telescope, Brittle Paper, Spillwords Press, Metastellar, Gypsophila Magazine, Harpy Hybrid Review, Allegro Poetry Magazine, CON-SCIO Magazine, and more. With an MFA in Creative Writing, Gloria was a reader for Barely South Review. She is the winner of the Brigitte Poirson 2024 Literature Prize, the finalist for the Jerri Dickseski Fiction Prize 2024 and the ODU 2025 Poetry Prize, both with honorable mentions. She is also a finalist for Lucky Jefferson's 2025 Poetry Contest. Her work was longlisted for the 2025 American Short(er) Fiction Prize. https://glriaogo.wixsite.com/gloria-ogo.