“I am me in the most undefined, shapeless way possible.”

“Drums beating on every quatrième beat, / Hypnotically locking in its crowd. / Soulful vocals engraving lyrics / Like poetry, asking for respect & unity.”

“the way my heart, having known / you, will continue to echo cavernously / even after your love is chiseled out / from the other crevices of me: / my mind, my soul, my fingernails, etc.”

“stretch marks sing survival / surrender written in scars / search this sacred skin”

“When at last we crashed into the shore, /I prayed —I still pray— to the moon’s pull, / to bring us home.”

“Love returned to me in a new form— / Not his lips, not his promises, / but the quiet communion of me with myself— / A love that was both tender and fierce; / both sensual and sacred— / A holy sensuality that asked nothing of me but truth.”

“Free me from imagining you as the reincarnation of my father / sent to see if I can keep my worthiness under your gaze.”

“That gap, the silence between maintenance and nurturing, became the space I had to cross.”

“I wanted her / to step away from the pond. / Less Narcissus,

more nurturer.”

“[This piece] is a celebration of honoring yourself fully, body, spirit, and journey, and moving with both confidence and tenderness into your own becoming.”