Your expectations rise from the phone, attach easily to the insides of my elbows: a leech draining blood—a steady pulse of “I wish you were’s” and “I wish you would’s”.
Weak from the loss of blood, I sit up, find my armor: Audre, Maya, Alice, Maxine, Rupi. I glance at the inside of my elbow and scrape at the slimy organism of lies and distortions and remember:
The power and shape and love of a woman who walks in the crimson pool of her full identity, unwilling to accommodate it for others,
A pillar of powerful posture who is so easily concealed in the light of day.
