I get my taste in music from my dad. My laugh sounds an awful lot like my high school best friend’s. I write notes in the margins of books just like my middle school English teacher used to. Instead of birthday cards, loved ones get letters because it was one of the best presents I received from an old boyfriend. For as long as I can remember I have been borrowing pieces of people to make them my own. Like the rising of the sun, it is unavoidable. With each person that I cross, every brush against my skin, my fluid form shifts. 

​

But cracks begin to show with general wear and tear, giving just enough room for the bad to creep in. A virus that shuts down the world. Three years in, is this the new normal? Abortion has been torn from our fingers no matter how dangerous the outcome. How many more children are going to grow up wondering where their next meal is coming from? Mass shootings on the rise. Will today be the day I don’t make it home? Eight stages of trans genocide down, only two more to go. When will I become just another name on a long, sad list? We are screaming for help but we are never loud enough. And when it all seeps under my skin, freezing in the silence, there comes a point when there is no room left for me. 

​

I shatter. 

​

Left alone in the wreckage, I am forced to find the strength to salvage the pieces and fit them back in place. The missing parts and the pieces too broken to be glued come together in a new form. Different, but still who I once was if you look past the gaps and adhesive.