By Haley Bossé
Go to work. Try not to cry in front of
children at work. Sit in a staff meeting and
try not to cry until a blood vessel bursts in
my eye at work. Try not to scream in a
meeting when I’m told to be ready to vote
on “this stuff” at work. Lock my keys in the
car and shriek at the sky until I have to go
back in to work. Trip on a root and stab my
fingers over and over into this cold earth,
this breathless sky, all of this too small to
hold you and not enough breath not enough
earth not enough sky. Not enough you, Nex.
Never enough.
Haley Bossé (they/them) calls for an immediate end to Israel’s genocide against the people of Palestine. Haley is a queer, non-binary preschool teacher from the Pacific Northwest. Some of their poems have found homes in Cartridge Lit, Strange Horizons, the Nimrod International Journal, en*gendered, All My Relations, and elsewhere. You can find Haley reading for Kitchen Table Quarterly, being sneezed on by a child, or on Twitter @TalkingHyphae.
