CW: violence, death.

I was inspired by my body, and bodies in general. What it means for a body to exist in spaces that find it unworthy, unholy. And how sometimes, we also have to carry our ancestry, our birthplace, in these very bodies. So we have bodies weighted with history and ancestry, but still found sacrilegious. How does one reconcile that? For me, to continue to exist and thrive in said body, is to exist in perpetual righteous rage. In spite of it all, our bodies are worthy, our bodies are enough.

—SI

Is it the last ray of starlight on your tongues?
We are ten feet tall.
Our grandmama drank all of winter and birthed rage
We are boys whose skins are tarnished trinkets
Here, all we have, is heat, and rain,
and running.
Does it pour into your bodies, radiant and true?
On the tarmac, we are the ones burning
In fragments, bodies caught in crossfire,
we pick ourselves undone.
Does it ignite, like fire?
It is the catching, the scalding, the flailing . . .
Is it blood, skin and bones?
These lips have morphed to glass, to marble, to steel
They’d drink dry a brook and fall,
parched to death.
We have died at the stake a hundred times.
Of whom are you drawn?
The Kalahari, the Sahara, the Namibia
Of his skull, our father chiseled ice.