“what called girl/ is marked /wrong mouth/ but makes/ new voice/ stutter made/ sound out/ swallowed wings/ stumbled wet/from jewel tongue.”

“but your heat/says different, this collect/of humid breath, /your body wielding/ every limb, root/it knows/ to make the same/ gash of discord…”

“Don’t abandon the flawed self-/ portraits of difficult eyes, lonely/ gender, shadowed sadness, unraveling/ red ribbons, spoken bones, harsh art/ of the body that should never flinch.”

“Forgive that you are always walking/ into the room of it, that you fill it with words, /with dreaming.”

“When you leave people intending to grow,/ don't expect to come back/ to the room of your childhood,

/or the humid attic of your first love. / People don’t stay where you love them.”