target sells a candle that smells like you sleeping

I lower my odd face to it and come
back up glamorously to be
zamboni’d with tears

it’s just like how the sun touched your smile
the way water moves invisibly
through a tree into
dying leaves

the pepper in your lips
when I learned what the
girls must’ve been curling
their bodies in the
club bathrooms for

and last night realizing how
rare it is to squint into
all of my hurt

how it’s safer to love
when the loss is as slick and
frightening as fire in a dream

how it’s safer to snuff it out
with my eyes trailing past my
own nose, with my body on
the bonfire, how courage is
wrapping your arms around
an O of high noon

and knowing that your trembling
is the gunfire of the heart,
your gasps the unborn rhythm
of a new national anthem

Wolf Indigo Baker is a trans 19-year-old sophomore at Stanford University with roots in New York City. Their writing has been published or is forthcoming in The Offing, The Pinch, Banshee, prose.onl and others. They are a core promotional and essayistic writer for Red Hot Org's TRANSA.