star

The dining room waits in reverent silence as the afternoon light spills through the west-facing windows, illuminating dust specks that dance above the space’s centerpiece: a massive table that has served four generations of my family.

My words don't come

in anything other

than my voice, and

my voice doesn't come

in size-12 Times New Roman;

It comes in butterfly wings and 

cluttered poems and ideas that

You know I think it just struck me I was sitting here reading summer poems tasting raspberry popsicles on my tongue but looking out the window,

 it's snowing out 

and the trees and stone wall and everything,

It's cold here, I reply to my grandparents when they ask how our week's going. It's cold, and wet, and already I am helping my friends put up Christmas decorations and string LEDs across their rooms, playing holiday music to try

They say that women don’t need men, and I believe that to be true. We don’t need men. But, by whatever powers may exist, does my young heart lie awake late at night and long to feel what it has never felt.