First-day tension and crackling cavity  

Dozen eyes, dozen titles 

Dozen lives, dozen chances  

All a blend of known and feared. 

 

Sunrise, and sunset.  

Setting roots in a floor of eggshell and smoke.  

A place once alive; the child of another. 

Now, mine to nurture.  

Pinks, stars, stripes, youthful nostalgia.  

I’ll make a home of this place.  

 

Another alarm, another habit forged.  

Run the bristles down your back. 

Choking, celery, carrot, cucumber. 

Sit among the dozen 

after years of sitting alone. 

 

The batch, still fresh and steaming, but easier to digest.  

The kind-hearted and comforters, 

The intimidating, proud, spacy, loud.  

The violets, the yellow trumpets.  

 

Still, I am ambiguous.  

Should I fly from their tongues? 

Is it foolish that I speak?  

Yet they answer as they read me.  

I belong.  

 

The smeared vantablack chips away.  

These new things, so dreaded, 

now scaffold my pedestal.  

 

So thank you— 

To the sweet, soft, and patient, 

To the boss, to the present, and each groggy rise. 

Thank you to the chapter.  

Thank you to each page. 

And to every lingering syllable.  

 

I smile at autumn’s dawn;  

at the approach of the flocks. 

As now, my feathers have sprouted. 

And I stand beside you.  

In the face of new things.