by Monica Colón

after she couldn't bring herself to say the word
"lesbian"—it stuck in her throat like cattail down
to its stalk on a windless day—and so instead
she said "same sex." She said "who you think
you are," and I didn't bother correcting
her because I know my saviors.
Before the meds, before the friends, before the realization
that flipped me right-side-up, it was the house finch

flinging treble notes to the sun. The fossils in limestone,
the smell of the balsam fir. The cinnamon roll
thawed in the microwave and gulped down with
with cafe con leche. Waiting for the next episode
of the animated show about queer witches.
Reading what the others have written down
to make their resting places, following them
in my little handcar of poems. So I try
to tell her, and she is blank
and disappointed under her Bible-verse decals,

and I burn, I burn with lust for living.

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Monica Colón is a Salvadoran/American writer from Waco, Texas who has lived and studied in the Chicago suburbs and Querétaro, Mexico. Her poems have been featured in Susurrus Magazine, Cool Rock Repository, and Paddler Press. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the winner of the 2021 Iris N. Spencer Sonnet Contest from West Chester University Poetry Center.