The stories I have to tell may not all be true. This is why,
when I break open my fortune cookie at family dinner I
get a message, poetry is for the selfish. Words that come
from my father who holds my cosmos in his reading glass,
thoughts stolen from my mother who is determined to curve
my shadow into a snow globe.

You see, I have a theory about resistance: I exist
in the tension between warring magnets, a wormhole
between universes that have no blue and green for me,
my soul a tribute to the fact: poetry is for the selfish. I made
my apologies already, sorry for being loud in the wrong
ways and quiet in the right ones.

You see, in this life I can have only one favorite color but
in reality the answer is always C#. In this life I have woven
a web to keep my head above the clouds just so my feet can sink
two inches into ocean sand. Poetry is for the selfish, says the spider
at the crown of my head. And if all I can allow myself is four letters,
I’ll take them with the uneven edges of piano keys and the shadow
of something more wholehearted.