1. held breath in the half-light of red-eyed dawn
2. muscle tension before the brick is thrown
3. forgotten bodies piled on a dorm-room floor
4. someone’s daughter
5. shade from a leaf gone once the sun moves in the sky
6. life destroyer of the hometown football star
7. huddled masses yearning to breathe breathe breathe br
8. twisted knot, a hive of cuts on thighs, wrists
9. disembodied soul and the cat’s 10th life
10. your teacher, bus driver, dental hygienist, the girl who sits
stone-faced at church
11. (me)
12. every third woman reading this
13. a reinvention of reinvention
14. the millisecond before the razor or the noose
* after alternate names for black boys by Danez Smith
-Terri Muuss