Dear Queer Student

When you called my classroom safe for vulnerability,
my blood hitched. I could think of nothing except how safe
you aren’t. The old stories oversimplify—claws & isolation
in the forest, lanterns & family in the village. As if families
can’t sour, or protract their own claws. As if there were ever

such a place as safe. But while I’ve got you still
under this scant protection, my sonnet’s salted circle,
I’ll give you my still-unmastered secret: you don’t owe anyone
your trauma. You can write it plain, or chiaroscuroed,

or not at all. Write, if you want, about tulips or tetherball
or the after-scent of a peach orchard, post-storm. Don’t
be afraid to take joy by the forelock & stroke her rippling neck.

This is your chance to slake the fox’s unreachable longing,
to hang the grapes at eye-level, ripe & incalculably sweet.

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Emily Rose Cole is the author of the collection Thunderhead and the chapbook Love & a Loaded Gun. She has received awards from Jabberwock Review, Philadelphia Stories, The Orison Anthology, and the Academy of American Poets. Her poetry has appeared in American Life in Poetry, Best New Poets 2018, Poet Lore, and the Los Angeles Review, among others. She holds a PhD in poetry and disability studies from the University of Cincinnati.