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

“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.”