fall in love with the face in the mirror / watch it do new things, lose the mirror / fall in love with the feeling of a new feeling on your face, call it a small freedom / claim a moment unperformed / meet your own eyes in another’s face grasp control and relinquish it / a new story is taking over you and all of us at the same moment / maybe you are the letter r in a sentence that wants to incite a revolution but desperately needs respite and you can do both / everything in between is a different letter to conjure the breath through mouthflesh / a different way of being in the world, a different miracle / now catch your eye again and relinquish solitude / feel how many bacteria and cells and memories and ideas are collaborating for this exhale, this (insert your name) / write a story of satisfaction and swoon and delight and abundance / and when you grieve let it only be for the hours spent lost from yourself / but don’t give up the lessons you could have only learned in that wilderness / like when you see the moon this full, howl.

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