Gracias to the numerous students, poets, writers, communities, schools, organizations, and universities who invited me into your spaces and allowed me to wonder, and where I read many of these works first, and where I was fed by your imaginations and kindnesses. Gracias to Hannah Ensor and Eloisa Amezcua for your friendship, support, and work. Gracias to Christine Sandoval for asking me to think alongside you about water. Gracias to Ana Maria Alvarez y Contra Tiempo, Liz Lerman, CALA Alliance and the Bi-National Arts Residency for dancing toward the water with me. Gracias a Jehan Bseiso, Omar Robert Hamilton, Nathalie Handal, Sharif Kouddous, and Ahdaf Soueif, and the Palestinian Festival of Literature family—your work makes us all more possible. Gracias to the students from Al-Quds Bard and Hebron University for sharing your stories, dreams, and rigorous imaginations with me.

Gracias a mis herman@s y mi equipo, Solmaz Sharif, Roger Reeves, and Rickey Laurentiis. You three are my trinity—how lucky to have found you through poetry, and then to have you all become so much more than poetry to me. Gracias to Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Ada Limón, Kamilah Aisha Moon, and Brenda Shaughnessy—mis hermanas y mis guerreras en poesía. Gracias to Christian Campbell, my brother in heart, imagination, and power. Gracias to Fady Joudah who offered me love, patience, and care—I would not be where I am in this day without the friendship and strength you showed me. Gracias to Mary Szybist for wondering alongside me and toward me. Mil gracias y amor a Monique Cover, who first gave me the gift of poetry.

Gracias to Joy Harjo, Deborah Miranda, Heid E. Erdrich, Louise Erdrich, Kim Blaser, Ofelia Zepeda, Karen Wood, LeAnne Howe, and the many Native women who have made and continue to make poetry a place where we can exist, and who have become my Elders and family.

Gracias to my mentor and friend Dr. Bryan Brayboy who offers me and so many other Native women more than he will ever know of our imagination and futurity—I am lucky for you.

Gracias a mi familia, Bernadette, Richard, Richie, Sis, John, Desirae, Gabriella, Belarmino, Sarah, Valentin, Serena, Franki, David, Liv, and also to my Aunt Patsy.

Gracias to the storytellers before me, whose energies and languages I carry in me. Inyech ‘asumach ‘ahota. Ojalá.

Gracias a Saretta, mi media naranja, mi mañana. “Sè que cuando te llame / entre todas las gentes / del mundo, / sólo tú serás tú.”—Pedro Salinas.

Gracias a ti, Reader, for entering these poems and making them, and the persons and stories living in them, including you and me, always possible.

Dedication

Toward the missing and murdered Indigenous and Native women, girls, trans women, nonbinary and two spirit people in our families, communities, and across the Americas and other occupied lands—in thinking of the touch and tenderness you deserve;

toward my mother, who generously imagined and taught me a way of love along which I and my beloveds can be the most possible;

toward our many bodies of flesh, language, land, and water;