My freewrite from a workshop I taught to some high school students on the Westside

Holiness is finally drowning
the last prayer to a starfish
before joining the bones of brothers
I am a barnacled reef thatched
across the floor of the ocean’s palace,
a chalice of blood and damage
I am Atlas, this grave is just a pressure
point on my third vertebra, I am the velocity
of a mother’s prayer, the sun tangled
in viscous cables of horizon, lightning
that veins the fog, I am the amputated
ankle, the raised blister of a brand,
I am sand and salvation, I am
piranhas pressing against a colonial thigh,
I am why horses humble themselves,
I am an archer whose quiver
is ringing empty, I sing the silence
after lost battles, I am mausolea and
memory, I am hyacinth and curry powder
I am not synthetic – I am indigo dye
and indigenous death, I am the native
heiress standing when no one is left