he hasn’t seen me since I was 19
a girl’s body, wild with restriction & clear liquid
never opened except for light, wrist
like crescent moon
only shadows of a whole bone
I want to say I’ve grown
say my body is that of a woman now
but this is not a woman’s problem
13 years old – my French ballet teacher
bobbed hair & caustic
told me to suck in my stomach again
& again, lower back near concave, skin un-hideable
putting her hands on my fat & I’d cry
wondering how all the other girls got tall-bone genes
lean & opulent, their dance somehow
less moving, more floating
remember wanting to say
I have the exact body of my egyptian father,
& his mother & his mother’s
brothers, a round belly & broad shoulders
which will someday disappear
nearly three years of crushed almonds
& seltzer water
I will get past it, fall in false love, leave
my lover who tells me this body is incorrect
outgrow a decade of clothes
buy new ones, dance
decide I want to garden, tend
& let longing return to my bones
Sarah Yanni is a Mexican-Egyptian poet in Los Angeles. She is the author of two chapbooks: Hard Crush (Wonder Press, 2024) and ternura / tenderness (Bottlecap Press, 2019). Her writing appears in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Mizna, SPECTRA Poets, Autostraddle, Full Stop, Wildness Journal, Iterant Mag, among others, and is anthologized in INFINITE CONSTELLATIONS (University of Alabama Press, ed. Khadijah Queen) and FUTURE/PRESENT (Duke University Press, ed. Elizabeth Webb). She has been recognized as a Finalist for BOMB Magazine’s Poetry Prize, Kelsey Street Press’ QTBIPOC Book Contest, the Andres Montoya Letras Latinas Poetry Prize, the Hayden’s Ferry Review Inaugural Poetry Prize, the Outpost Fellowship, and Poetry Online’s Launch Prize. A Best of the Net Nominee, she was a Finalist to be the Poet Laureate of Glendale, CA in 2023. She has received support from Community of Writers and the California Institute of the Arts. Formerly, she served as the Managing Editor of The Quarterless Review and Poetry Editor of The Dry River.