They said

her tongue is too big
for a pretty little mouth like that

They wanted to cut it
as if it will give me more freedom
Change my mind
Liberate my sleep

Then they said
tape your mouth shut
Rip it from your lips then
remember that sting every morning when you wake
Build up that grainy residue
So that no amount of scrubbing away will change anything

That raspy, hazy din of voice–
It’s not mine anymore when you let it invade your comfort

Whose grating is it then

when I bend and it works
Your move
then it just doesn’t?

I’ll rest in my autumn warmth
wait for the drowning of winter
then after
I will warn you of Spring

I’d like to think that your ways
are the air, the winds.
I am the water you can move, and carry mists of me with you,
though brief and fleeting
effervescent,
though you can’t see me there sometimes,
I am felt in you. I am breathed through you.
When you’re heavy with me, you are the fog.
When I’m heavy with you, I am the breaks of surf
smeared out on the sands.
Sometimes
we make a rip curl,
burrowing under me
by some unearthly gravitational force.
I swell and mix with you.
We fight for the top till
we must fall over the apex
and break over the earth,
crashing down
again and again.
Until there is no more moon
there is no separating us,
as much as they try.
The sea of our stories
will be played in by the ages
of Children and their children.
From our ritual they may find sanctuary
So long as our ritual exists