“Read the scars on my body like braille, for I no longer know how to tell a story that belongs deeply to me but is no longer mine.”

I want to be something to pray for but I don’t know how to be.

And what am I but the smallest of footnotes in the universe’s everlasting memoir?

This country collects too many tongues, until our only language is silence.

I don’t know how to let you out without destroying us both.

Seek refuge in the space between my bones.

Somewhere inside my throat lives your ache.

I like to trace the ghosts of your fingers on the back of my hand. They read- I don’t know how to hold without you.

I pocket grief and it beckons me like a lover.

My silhouette is an ocean, your lips a sailor.

There is a calmness in not knowing.

Every beauty mark, a country to roam. Every stretch mark, a river to cross.

I loved you in quiet because to hide is to pretend that it is okay.

Allow me to introduce myself, A warning and a welcoming all at once.

We are so much more than skin can hold.

When I look in the mirror, I don’t see a poem.

I have lived too many lives to be only one thing, and instead of attempting to mesh them into a form of a human being, I have decided to love every jagged edge of mine.

All forces that reside in the body are angels.

Our struggle is not easy. Those who oppose our cause are rich and powerful and they have many allies in high places. We are poor. Our allies are few. But we have something the rich do not own. We have our bodies and spirits and the justice of our cause as our weapons.

The soul is subject to health and disease, just as is the body. The health and disease of both, undoubtedly depend upon beliefs and customs, which are peculiar to mankind.

Pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body.

Those who grieve find comfort in weeping and in arousing their sorrow until the body is too tired to bear the inner emotions.

Man’s shortcomings and sins are all due to the substance of the body and not to its form; while all his merits are exclusively due to his form.

Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other Who think the same thoughts without need of speech

In so far as the soul is a force residing in the body; it has therefore been said that the properties of the soul depend of the condition of the body.