thank you for constancy and commitment
thank you for hard work and the tight elastic red of sore thighs
thank you for dedication, for tiny pellets of good work
skipped like stones over the glassy hours of a day
thank you for the gurgle of laughter rising
from the wettest parts of my mossy forest heart
thank you for obliqueness, chess moves initiated
by the huge hand of time I do not trust
but cannot help but pray to
thank you for scissors, a needle and thread
with which I sew constellation sentences
into the universe I call my home
thank you for hearth and comfort —blankets, my mother
these indelible heavy weights that place me in the world
thank you for attention, my eyes, thank you for turning my head
at the moment a flock alights and speckles the sky
in glorious, instinctual patterns
thank you for strangers who I love like myself:
because they exist, because they are loud and strange and buoyant
thank you for the lesbian professor in a gaudy suit who shrieks
and with both hands pulls the past and future of my people
dazzling and bright into a single moment
thank you for the walk to the cafe we relish in more than the coffee
and for the coffe too, hot and indispensible
thank you for curiosity: that crooked finger, that spiraling fractal
beckoning me ever closer and ever further from
the drumbeatheartbeat point of it all
and thank you for my body, who does not have words
to name the dance but nonetheless, invisibly and deftly
finds the rhythm
Claudia Maurino, ’24