On this staircase I alight to see the world in silver shoe and indigo slipper. My fingers trail the polished railing. Tears burst beneath my feet as heel pierces scattered sacrificial petal . . .

People tell me I have this sense of self that radiates off me like silk spun with moonlight, but I am just a girl lost in her own eyes . . .

~In response to the overturning of Roe vs Wade

The threads of the present are fraying. I watch the fibers loosen at the hem. Slowly, the unfinished weaving of world slips off the loom and flutters into fathomless darkness.

I curve toward the milky way as my ribs crack and oxygen spills through the fissure of my being. Threads cut from silken cabaret stocking trace patterns into my skin . . .

The nightclub wraps silken around me. Candles at the tables and velvet on the chairs, words slip between my fingers. Language massages my palms . . .

Shakespeare spoke the truth. There is a hole in my narrative . . .

I find my heart set off center in a clay vessel. The lid is open, a dash of crimson shadowed within . . .

I think about how I can lie to you so as not to break you with my breath . . .