in the morning, pregnant proof

that in you, life swells. i know

i’m not a mother, but i know what it is

to nurse a thing you want to kill

& can’t. you learn to love it. yes.

i love my sweet virus. it is my proof

of life, my toxic angel, wasted utopia

what makes my blood my blood.

i get it now, how beauty so loved

her warden. you stare at fangs

long enough, even fangs pink

with your own blood look soft.

//

low key, later, it felt like i got it

out the way, to finally know it

up close, see it in the mirror.

it doesn’t feel good to say.

it doesn’t feel good to know

your need outweighed your fear.

i braved the stupidest ocean. a man.

i waded in his stupid waters.

i took his stupid salt & let it

brine my skin, took his stupid

fish into my stupid hands & bit into it

like a stupid flapping plum. i kissed at

his stupid coral & stupid algae.

it was stupid. silly really. i knew nothing

that easy to get & good to feel

isn’t also trying to eat you.

//

knew what could happen. needed

no snake. grew the fruit myself.

was the vine & the rain & the light.

the dirt was me. the hands drilling

into the dirt were my hands.

i made the blade that cut me down.

but i only knew how to live

when i knew how i’ll die.

i want to live. think i mean it.

took the pill even on the days

i thought i wouldn’t survive myself.

gave my body a shot. love myself

at least that much. thank you, me.

thank you, genvoya, my seafoam savior.

thank you, sick blood, first husband, bff

dead river bright with salmon.

say it with your whole black mouth

say it with your whole black mouth: i am innocent.

& if you are not innocent, say this: i am worthy

of forgiveness, of breath after breath.

i tell you this: i let blue eyes dress me in guilt

walked around stores convinced the very skin

of my palm was stolen. what good has it brought?

days filled flinching thinking the sirens

were reaching for me. & when the sirens were mine

did i not make peace with God?

so many white people are alive

because we know how to control ourselves.

how many times have we died on a whim

wielded like gallows in their sun-shy hands?

here, standing in my own body, i say: next time

they murder us for the crime of their imaginations

i don’t know what i’ll do.

i did not come to preach of peace

for that’s not the hunted’s duty.

i came here to say what i can’t say

without my name being added to a list

what my mother fears i will say

what she wishes to say herself

i came here to say