I put on a coat made of paper where fear lines each side. To restore old books, the paper can be split in half and reattached with a new archival center, to preserve it. I don't know what can be done with circuits and wires, but imagine edges meeting just beyond my finger. I painted my nails. That's why I chose this nexus. This doesn't mean anything as a theory of gender identity. I am training my left hand to be as adept as my right. I cannot decide if I am larger than my skin. The most expensive thing I ever touched was a book and somehow I was not afraid I would ruin it. As soon as I say, no one has mentioned this color, a woman comments on it. It makes me miss my friend, the geologist, whose favorite color is teal. Is it clear to you that "as soon" is actually indicative of a twenty-four hour period, give or take a few hours? That the woman holds a staff shaped like a key and neither of us knows what kind of lock such a key opens? The poet is in my ear, take notes, take notes, notes, notes, yes, notes. As soon as I got back from the sequoias I put the smoky quartz in a box and the polish back on my fingers. Metallic sheen. I prayed at each ancient, each ossified corpse for a little more magic than I had in my life. When I held out my hand to the phone it did not fly across the room to me. The truth: I was disappointed. I am softening myself, and I cannot seem to distinguish this from becoming more like a child. What if hysteria is a heuristic we can use to predict the future? Not Freud — picture Cassandra screaming unheeded or better yet a pop star "in hysterics after bombing" as the internet tells me when I google "famous hysterics." As if these women had been recorded as individuals. These many-gendered women I feel so tender toward. When such a feeling is a bomb or a bullet crossing a gap, but what is the gap. I am afraid to go to the store alone. Each place I told a lie in I can see clearly, as I can see my father in the chair in the middle of the room saying no I don't think it's a good idea even though that chair was against the wall and I was on the stairs. My father must have said more than that. Yes, we were talking about nail polish and what was coming toward me, the man I was sure was going to launch himself across the foodcourt. The strange space where the fear might be justified but until it happens it seems there's nothing to be done. What color does the sky change when a "bad thing" is on the horizon, but it's not a storm or a tornado? That's the color of the interval between me and the man's possible violence. I regret not submerging myself in the very cold water called "mirror lake." I have always wanted to go through a mirror. I add this to my list. The list is longer than I remember it. There is one day that is cool and this reprieve makes every hot day after it seem impossible to stand. And then I saw a meteor and then two, real ones, in the sky. A meteor is only the action, the burning up. And the thing about them is, unless you're lucky, you only see them out of the corner of your eye. So you, like the meteor, are moving to a point of absence, just the night.

Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.