this morning it’s
almost as if I need nothing
but the grass wobbling
outside the window the blue
peering through the gold oaks
the music Fox picked for me
humming beneath it all
almost as if I won’t soon shake
and startle at anything unless
I rise from bed to eat don’t
take me from this quiet I
came here to learn what
it means to house you
in my body once I had a name
that sounded like light skipping
twice across water when I heard it
it parted the mud of my mind
I loved to listen to it lift
the tongues of my loves but
I’ve had to give it up God are you
the hunger beginning the nothing
my stomach holds I’ve decided
I’m not what’s named I’m what swims
through it the motion not
the body like the wind
see me through what I move
I’m not the leaves
God I’m the trembling
ARRO MANDELL (they/he), originally from Brooklyn, now lives in Ann Arbor where they are currently a fellow at Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan.