Sea of strangers exhales.               

                                              Something natural

 
reorders us                without consent.           We reorder         

 
            the coastline.               My therapist:         

 
                                                           what do you feel 

 
 in your stomach?     In your chest?    I feel nothing.  Nothing 

 
matters. I touch nothing.    I’m angry.   Stop

 
asking.                 Have you ever stood on a shore, 

 
felt the water change heights?  Felt the wet sand rush to squeeze

 
your legs too tight? 

 
                               In each of us:

 
                                            possibility,   a knife wedged 

 
           under the mattress, a new strangeness, an undiscovered way 

 
       we could touch each other, a bird never heard before 

 
   singing, an untaken path, 

 
                                    or genesis.

Copyright © 2022 by Aliah Lavonne Tigh. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 19, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

She really let herself go.

This story is hard to tell. 
When the men you love
insist a woman hold on
never 
let herself go 
never 
let herself loose
never 
let herself leave
never 
let herself depart
never 
let herself mobilize
never 
let herself imagine
never 
let herself grow
big enough to lift off
the runway 
like a jet
full of fuel.

Copyright © 2022 by Stacey Waite. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 22, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.