nom nom nom with Kristina Ray

Should I force myself to follow normal’s rhythm?

Should I stitch my pulse into its beige procession,

march where the pavement swallows every echo whole?

I am the furthest thing from normal

a bruise blooming where their rulers snapped.

Tell me what even is normal

but a lullaby hummed by the unfractured?

I have lived beyond their careful fences,

beyond the white picket hush of expectation,

so far outside the perimeter

my name arrives like a storm

unforecasted, electric, salt with rain.

My shadow refuses straight lines.

It coils like smoke in cathedral light,

spills over the edges of sanctioned hours,

keeps its own feral calendar.

Normal wants symmetry.

I am tide and undertow,

a constellation misread as error.

If there is a metronome,

it has never found my wrist.

My blood keeps time with thunder

lyrical, lawless, alive.

What even is normal?

I don’t know, but I live by my own rhythm.

Fiona Bridges Mark Crutchfield Stefan Pasek A Writer’s Voice Sara da Encarnação Kim Williams, M.Div. Becky Hayward

pick any line and use it as your first