She's heard stories of Vietnam vets who can still feel the tingling of their amputated limbs. She's wondering how many women are walking around this … - Andrea Gibson

Ever feel like the best of you is something you're still hoping to grow into?

Mary Levine calls you a dyke
and you don't have the words to tell her she's wrong

and right. You just show up to her house
promising to paint your fingernails red

with what will gush from her busted face
if she ever says it again.

I know this world is far from perfect.
I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon.
I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic.
But every ocean has a shoreline
and every shoreline has a tide
that is constantly returning
to wake the songbirds in our hands,
to wake the music in our bones,
to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that new born river
that has to run through the center of our hearts
to find its way home.