one night at bath time, my mother tries scrubbing the brown out of me, grating a ridged sponge over & over my skin, until i'm crying

The bells chime, The lyre, harp, and trumpet; The notes are the rays Of the moon

Careful, dear child, when you walk on earth.

Certain journeys we can only make alone, reaching into the void and hoping we land safely.

I HATE MY TONGUE. The last words I said to my Abuelita were words said through tears and broken Spanish.

Long before evening, he imagines himself at your door, exchanging greetings with a brass knocker, the number 32.

Love expanded like a thought in my head circling like a snake made of smoke whispering of an endless hunger.

Instructions: Print and cut along the dotted lines. Mix and match to create your own poem.

five a.m. fog breaks for seafoam skies. I teardrop across dewy grass.

Thin air between us, our fogged breaths mingle, and you wait for my words to form from where they’re forged.

at first confession, I wish my favorite priest a happy Valentine’s.

she saw him. walking the streets— her heart stopped from the periphery.

All around me women are brick laying. Hand filthy from mortar, fingernails red from the clay they packed together to mold their fortress.

a cheap pink plastic rose and I board the train.

He minds the screaming kettle, silentious and steady, measured in teaspoons of amber clover bouquets

*Breeding ground for ill nurtured men* The day i found a suicide letter in mother’s room. Mine thought about committing suicide

I knew what she meant, but I can't help but think “Missus”: the misstep of the Missus.

My frail mother cries into a fishbowl then, drinks it down in a gulp.

where I come from— women wear blood-thick awlta on their feet, it fills up the cracks on their soles like Kaveri’s tributaries.

When I first write this story, my pencil snaps halfway through the first sentence I pick up another but a hand crumples me.