Poetry
Even the birds are quiet at this hour.
I gargle with saltwater to preserve my song.
There is a part of me that believes
in silence, in all its holiness—or tries to—
that does not argue with the part of me
that is wrong. The part of me that took our love
to the ocean more often than you know:
a red kite flying above the shore, oblivious
to the roaring, dependent upon the winds
of its origin. In my clutch, I watched it go.
I wouldn’t let go.
Stephanie Kaylor is a PhD student at UC Santa Barbara and curates the Sex Workers’ Archival Project. They are Reviews Editor at Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and their work can be found in journals including Four Way Review, The Shore, and Protean Magazine. She lives in Brooklyn.