this poem was inspired by “manhattan is a lenape word” by natalie diaz. i returned to that diaz poem more times than i can count last summer, and threads of it are found throughout so much of my work now. i highly recommend anyone reading this take a moment to read the diaz poem, and explore more of her work ♡
summer wind rushes through the air, like water filling drought-cracked earth, and floods across my room. tonight it is alive, and i watch it tear through my body and the aspen trees, lit up with the light above my neighbor’s door, my naked torso draped in the soft glow. somewhere, in the dark beyond my window, in perhaps the haunted ravine that borders the elementary school, a black cat with a silver collar will go home to its illegitimate children, who are learning for the first time a relief so gentle it nearly hurts. somewhere my heart is unafraid and unsickened. in the night i am a city wolf, stalking the same 3 square blocks like a king, the park bench is my throne. somewhere a woman sees the flexed curve of my shoulder blade from between the parsed slats of her blinds, and i ask her to keep it, a secret, a kiss. i ask them all to know me without my knowing and whisper to themselves how the shape of my curls look when magnified and stark and thrown across my room by a stray beacon. the light is a gift, and not for me, but it says “welcome home” and i cannot speak of my body with my own words, there must always be something - a phrase or theme - borrowed in the night. somewhere a rocket falls and asks to make itself at home between the ribs of a proxy, somewhere a rich man will light his cigar over a city of filth and mutter how ugly the world has become while he studies the skyline through the glow of his reflection. and somewhere, not here, i am alone again in the night, remembering how to pose against my knife and i am wondering who’s making its blade really was. the mind of a man is only as much of a monster as his heart is fickle, and at summer camp i kissed a boy in secret, when we knew the world was on fire but could still look away, and i held hands with another between our sleeping bags, like a promise to not see each other’s bodies, not even in the muted starlight. but i am not there, i am a wolf in the night, hungry alone, and discovering an illegitimate den as it feels cold winds for the first time. and i give it a home, my body, i take it and welcome the den inside me. i am asking the wind to tell me something violent i know but can only find when the raw pads of my feet beg the earth over again and over again, somewhere in the night.
