“sister”: poem

i’d slap you in the face
but your words taught me
how glass
travels through a body

how it doesn’t rush
When it makes a home before it makes a wound &
how it learns the shape of you
before you learn the pain. 

some words
don’t bruise
they exile

they make a house

 in the body
and call it truth.

your tongue would learn
what mine was forced
to memorize.
how truth is sharpened
until it only cuts one way.
how softness becomes a lie.
when it protects the speaker
not the wounded.

swallow what you fed me
not to choke
but to understand
the weight of it.

let it settle
where your silence lived
in the places you dismissed
in the pain you renamed
in the wounds
you pretended
not to see

-”sister".”