1. On the application, I am asked how I would teach someone to do something I am good at. I don’t want to write a poem about poetry, but their hands beg the words from me like spare change. So I write about the way her hair falls around her face like rain. I tell them about how I am no longer afraid of hell because I have already tasted brimstone on her lips. On the application, I am asked how I would teach someone to do something I am good at. I write about loving her.

2. Most of the time, we are pillows. We are bedsheets. We are shower curtains and carpets, we are blankets on beds that no one really sleeps in. Most of the time, we muffle our own screams. Most of the time, we are silent, we are here, and we are barely necessary. Most of the time we are not one in a million, we are only one of a million. And all of the time, they look right through us. Is this what defeat tastes like?

3. My grandfather has not spoken to my uncle in twenty years. I wonder if God knows that. I wonder if He knows that bitterness has been hammered into my palms to make resentment easier to uphold. I wonder if God knows that I am the product of two decades of phoneline static and blood that has long since boiled over. I wonder if He knows that I am made of last straws, last nerves, and last chances. I wonder if God knows that even though my grandfather has not spoken to my uncle in twenty years, I have not spoken to you in three.

4. This is not a poem about poetry. This is my coming apart. This is my hospital bed, this is my growing up into something of good intentions. This is me, refusing to leave behind my childhood for your corporate machine. This is a poem about cogs that refuse to turn smoothly, this is a poem about rabbit-hearted vagrants refusing to smile at war. This is a fever dream of whiskey. This is not a poem about my becoming, this is my becoming.

5. On the application, I am asked to teach someone how to do something I am good at. I write about battle cries in law school classrooms. I write about how the hummingbird was the Aztec god of war. I write about wings beating the insides of our chests, I write about river rocks running red with blood, I write about the times civilizations revolted, and the times they simply laid down and died, I write about how defiance doesn’t just burn to death, it lights everything on fire. I write about how I ended this list on an odd number. I write about why I ended this list on an odd number: Because I refuse to be split in half so easily. Because I am not, and never will, be finished.