Most days there are too many places to start a poem. I worry that I’m trying to be profound or transcendent when really all I have to do is be human and stop being a centipede or a raccoon or “a poet”. I am a poet. I think I’m more a poet most days than a ‘Sarah’ or a serpent or a saint.

I am poetry for waking up and thinking that I wanted to sleep in for twenty-two minutes. Exactly twenty-two. I am poetry for the way I always drink two cups of coffee and pause for just a moment to hold the mug under my nose and let the mist lick at my chin. I am poetry for loving waking up and not being able to sleep because it gives me a place to nestle alone with myself like a lover– caress my own hair and tell the girl with bird bones and lioness lips that it will be okay. That sleep always comes back.

I am poetry. I sigh in similes and anaphora my hours away. I love you like a synecdoche– your words for your body for your hands.

I made myself out of onomatopoeia, consonance, and dactlys

and I’m not sorry for meaning nothing and everything.