She’s written her name on her wrist,
on the inside of her coat, a shield to her
body, carved it in pencils, traced and retraced
it, a wound in her eraser that can’t fade
like it does in everyone’s ears. She cannot yet say
in America, That is mine.
When that girl steals her sneakers,
the only things she thinks can’t be taken,
I—made of all her words she did not have—
plead: They’re hers. They’re hers
so mine, and she does not walk home that day
barefoot.
Jayne Shore is a writer living among the sky-tinted waters of Minneapolis. Her work has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic and Gather.