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Language absorbs violence, softens it, and repackages it until what is being described no longer feels like what is being done. It bends easily — just not, as it turns out, for everyone.
I want to build a home inside your voice, rest my name there, hang my loneliness in its quiet rooms —
then vanish for three days as if absence could make me less obvious.
I want to write my name
in the version of my voice that has not yet been silenced,
the one not rehearsed
for receipt.