I am soaking wet

In a sweatshirt two sizes too large

And in a skin bound too tightly for me to ever fully claim as my own

 

Poetry is the mirror in a dingy restroom

with fluorescent lighting, a moldy ceiling

as I pull off the damp clothes that cling to me

While I stand vulnerable and shaking

in nakedness

in humanness

She is honest

 

I think you can only see shame when it is pitch dark.

In the daylight, you can only feel it.

It makes a fiery pit in your stomach

Spreads to your cheeks

Makes you walk two steps behind your mother coming home from the grocery store

It is hands in pockets

Eyes on the ground.

 

Poetry is my origami mouth

Scribbled in her folds are

Things I am too ashamed to say out loud

Things I’m not supposed to know

But know anyway

Like how I knew you were going to crash and burn

But I kept sitting in the audience anyway

 

I’m sorry about that

 

I’m not very good at speaking

I touch the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth

And it settles there

The way colonies do in foreign countries

In misunderstanding

In destruction.

 

I can’t count the times

I’ve played with a word in my mouth like hard candy

But I always reconsider.

And swallow hard.

 

Marbles of words

caught in the bottleneck bend of my throat

but no one has time for me to spit it out.

Voices and steps echo on cobblestone streets

Fists in air

Shouts for change

A stranger grabs my hand

whispers hoarsely, “Can you feel it?”

And I do.

Just in a different way.

 

My fists write:

 

Poetry is not just my voice.

She is my revolution.