“Your persistence delivered me here. I am indebted to you.”

“And for a second, we were one and the same. Two people, lost, searching for something we didn’t know existed. We were both singing songs no one else could hear.”

“Moved by Whitman and the ephemerality of my youth, I decided that I would embrace whatever beauty and grace were available to me and maximize the life that I was, at the moment, so happy with.”

“i am a moth because / my father was a moth / and his father was a moth “

“…to love this body / is to deem it worthy of patience / and endless grace no other earthly being could grant even if they tried.”

“She is looking back at me. At my weeds and vines, flies and thorns, slime and moss, my uncontained overgrowth. Unfettered. Unafraid. Similarly besotted.”

“Her brow breaks like the tide…”

“now it’s mother, / tied with the ropes of rebellion, / gagged by the makeshift cloth / made of the skin of her daughter’s heart—”

“I, too, carry the burden of blooms: / chrysanthemums of achievement, / ivy of promises, entwined too tight—”

“In your offspring, the future women of your bloodline, will you learn to be empowered to take up space; to stop hiding things about yourself that seem different in this cold, new world; to feel content in how much you know about the way the world works.”

“Just last year I cut the ends of my relaxed hair and let my thick fro grow wild / I licked the brown hues of joy’s elbows / I cried from laughter until snot graced my chin”