You are standing at the mirror,
pulling at the edges of your reflection,
wondering which piece of yourself to trim away
to fit the shape of his praise.
You are tucking back the parts of your spirit that feel "too much,"

The city doesn’t wake to the sun; it wakes to the grinding of gears.
January seventh.
Minneapolis is a landscape of salt and exhaust,
and Renee is just a mother in a Honda Pilot,
the ink of her own poems still fresh in her mind,

The boots don’t walk, they stomp,
a heavy, rhythmic bruising of the asphalt
under a sky that has forgotten how to be blue.
They arrive in the gray hours,
the color of a storm that never breaks,