Epektasis

I keep the verse where it hurts,
like a tongue to a chipped tooth—
not to savor,
not to show anyone,
only because it is there
and will not stop being there.

A woman said,
have a nice day,
air shaped into decency,
the kind you give a cashier,
a stranger at a door,
someone you do not know well enough
to hate.

She said she wasn’t mad.
The air did not change.
Nothing corrected itself.

And still the mouth that heard her
found its word—
bitch—
quick as a reflex
that pretends to be a thought.

I keep seeing the seconds between them,
that narrow place
where a life can turn
and doesn’t—
where I keep imagining
my hands.

I don’t want her to become a sign.
I don’t want to lift her
like a clean cloth
for people who want clean stories.
She was not a lesson.
She was not a banner.
She spoke,
and then she did not.

After, I picture the procedural calm:
uniformed patience,
radio language
that means nothing and means: now.
My chest fills with iron.

Anger comes like that—
not eloquence,
just weight,
a blunt thing in the body
looking for permission.

And there is another hunger:
the sweetness of return,
the quick sugar-rush
that tells the blood:
now.

But safety was not offered.
No one promised it.

I say: turn the other cheek,
and my jaw tightens,
hinged to bone.

Cheek:
the soft side of the face
that admits it can be struck.
A tenderness offered
without agreement.
A part of me
not built for speech.

To turn it
is not to forget.
It is not to bless the harm.
It is to do something unbearable
with the need to answer back.

Sometimes I think turning
is only this:
moving the wound inward
so it doesn’t ricochet
into the next body.

Sometimes I hear
how proud that sounds—
as if refusal
wanted an audience
even in the dark.

So I watch myself.
I watch how grief
tries to become permission—
how quickly the world
acquires a face
I can imagine striking.

This is the interior violence:
the wrenching back
of the hand that wants to clench,
the swallowing of the word
that would make a weapon of the mouth,
the breaking—slow—
of the relief
of becoming what I condemn.

There are mornings I wake
already holding a stone
in the fist of my imagination.

And then I stand again
in my small room—
no crowd,
no clean story—
and ask for help
with the humiliating request
to remain unviolent.

Not numb.
Not shining.
Only this narrow work:
to keep my soul
from taking the shape
of what I fear.

If I do not turn my cheek—
if I do not turn it inward,
toward the blow I want to throw—
I will become
what I am naming.

Another shot.
Another body.
Another day that is not nice,
made by my own hand.

So I practice
a severe gentleness—
not surrender,
not spectacle,
the one place
I can keep the world
from multiplying inside me.

Have a nice day,
I whisper—
not to bless the gun,
not to absolve the arm,
but to keep my own mouth
from learning
the killer’s word.