Your skin covers me utterly

like sultry hot caramel topping

on an arctic sundae treat,

slowly melting away

the icy ridges

of the artificial texture.

But then, after a while,

the newly tamed matter

stops running, solidifies to

eternally unite with the surface of its canvas.

The Woman

I am not my name, I am not any name. I am not the words I speak, nor the thoughts I think. I am not the things I did or what I will do, not the places I have been or where I will go, not what I was or whom I am becoming. I am not what covers me or what is beneath the style I wear. I am not my naked body and I am not what it contains. I am not my foot that walks or my mouth that talks or my eye that seeks or my mind that understands. I am not the smile I smile or the look I slice they air with. I am not even the very essence of me that you feel subtly across the room.

I am also the lack of it. The void you notice the next day and the day after that. I am not either this or that, I am it all. I am the one and the only, the everything and the something. I am the what you were looking to find. I am the why you got here, I am the time it took. I am the pain I suffered to have you and the pain I caused you by my absence. I am the loneliness and solitude you have managed to endure. I am the restlessness you feel, the thing that sent you around the world to discover. I am not solely what you wanted to gain but also what you are afraid to lose.

I am the unspeakable, unthinkable, undefined and the vague but you can sense me, everywhere. In every song, in every line of a poem and in every book ever written in any language, in every sunrise, in every new day, in every moment, in every time you loved and every time you ceased loving. I am in every revolution, in every viscous soul. In every cry, every hurt, every giving up and trying again. I haven’t been there but I was present. I am the rain that falls and the birds that fly, the water that runs and the one single doubt that changes everything.

I am the earth and the moon and the cycle. I am the servant and the queen at the same time. I am the power and submission and the whole system. I am the beginning and the end. I am the mother and the child, the sinner and the saint, the innocent and the guilty. The good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, the pure and the wasted, the give and the take. Before I become what I am when I am there, I had been what I am when I wasn’t there long time ago. I am the entire universe and I am the single grain of salt. I am what I am to you.

Ute Anderson: I am a second year MSW (masters of social work) student here at CSUN. I got my BA in psychology here at CSUN in 2014. I’m a German-American immigrant, a feminist and this year I intern at the CSUN Women’s Research and Resource Center.