Sans

I mispronounce my body as if
the architecture of the spine
were soft, as if this poem could
start here,
in the space between open lips,
even though it resists a title.
To be means to exist
with a name. To be means
to have a body worth defining.

Full of cold faith, a poem
is an entity of quiet hunger,
an origin story saturated
with home.
Half-woman, half-artist,
I am creating the thing
that has created me.