I am a mouthful of wind,
a bell ringing past the hour,
a flame that does not know how to hush itself.

I speak, and the walls lean back,
startled, disapproving.
They say I should shrink, fold my voice
into the palm of a quieter woman.

But love is a confession,
a cathedral of echoes,
a mouth stretched wide with its own urgency.

I do not know how to whisper it,
to ration it out like breadcrumbs.
I give it whole, body and bone,
a flood, a monsoon, a fevered hymn.

Do not make me bite my tongue raw
for loving too much,
too recklessly, too ruinously,
as if devotion were something to be buried.

You-tight-lipped, unshaken-
do not tell me my love is too large to hold.
If your hands are small,
if your heart is locked shut,
do not make me the trespasser.

I will not shrink myself down to fit you.
I will not carve my love into a quieter thing.
Let it be known: I spoke it aloud.
I will not regret the sound.