Dear kin, I had an idea for a poem. A brown

woman spell. I thought I would add some

cardamom and cumin, knowing those

are favorites. But I have none in my cupboard

so what does that make me? I’m a pre-emptive

strike imagining you before you can enter. Can you

see how much this hurts? I would call it

loot. To be in the way of yourself

all the time. The roads you grew up on

the same roads as the central ones in

the empires. Their names suffix and compass

in every turn and step. The woman

in this poem is a jostling weight within

my bones. She is asking to be remembered

and I don’t know how. The answer is in my body,

yes, but I am not in my body. I am too much

in my bubble of one with my one-litre bottle

of water and my bachelor suite. I am not

willing to give it up and get out of my head.

The truth is I am terrified. When I feel various

and several, I know I am whirling the way a cotton

bud in an ear canal sounds, constantly chafing

like an excavation, brushing off the waste

of the present accumulated on what has always

already been there, yearning to be found,

and I know that if it does, the person I am now

will disappear. I will say thank you when I’m ready.