I Fight for Love, Unsullied
–After Jack Kerouac 

And soon I will be many, twisting shadows into something more than absence, dreaming one
step beyond fantastical and purer than iodine. Golden, the way we will march, the day-
’s sour blood peeling from the heels of our rotted feet and leaving a trail for our young to follow. I 
learned to wash my soles in rivers we pass. Now I hold my grime like a foal, too virgin to know the will
to live is more privilege than right, eyes open from birth as care from a mother is no more usual to find
than diamonds. When she stands on spindled hooves I will learn to write as I sing, open like the
last rattled exhale of a dying woman. I will be sharp enough to shatter the strongest of bone. Right
between song and sob I will turn my face to the heavens and it will be quiet among the words
spilled from a thousand tired tongues, among a chorus of anger rejoicing in a new home. And
soon they will scream with me, indistinguishable from sorrow, intertwined with rage, and they
will track filth into every clean foyer and smear mud in the grooves of hardwood. There will
be no beauty in anything clean. Together the thousands of me will love and fight until to be
is to be real, until I collapse on muddied grass and know the answers were always simple.