It was clumsy in the best way possible. Smooth clumsy, easy clumsy. Familiar. It was the first time, Natalie was the first time, that I’d felt something beyond a rush of blood and an inward lurch. She didn’t leave afterward and I didn’t want her to

For Piper, race was always a conscious affiliation, not an essentialist identity. […] Throughout all of this, Piper seems to have organically arrived at an understanding of race that aligns with its actual definition—a social construct rather than a biological fact.

glint of blade, peeled back
skin, all the pigs but one growing restless
because no one’s taught them terrified
or necessity or how to keep a whole town
fed

My own mother died years ago, and, similar to Honor Moore’s experience, she left me her journals, letters, essays, and notebooks filled with quotations and existential pondering. Like Moore, it took me years to fully unpack the boxes, a decade slipping away before I gathered the courage to read it all front to back and try to make sense of my mother’s life.

Your father held one of your mother’s notebooks where she wrote the names and addresses of the homes she cleaned. A few sticky notes stuck out like orange tongues from the notebook as he flipped through the pages.

I exist outside of time.
You open the door, and beneath your bare feet
crunches glass, wind rushes
into your eyes. You open your hands,
and husks and ashes dance
in an unending chain.