Leave me where I am,
as the brutal, the macabre,

the cut-glass northern tongue.
Ten years spent softening,

swallowing grit. It means nothing
when everyone else is born

into a place, greeted with warm milk,
and benedictions. Y’all must watch

the cactus moth, fellow trespasser,
its constant gnawing

against the unfamiliar,
for which I also do religiously.

Full fields of nopal, prickly pear,
are gorged and poisoned, but it too

must have a home. We know
this fact, and yet we shuck any being

of our choosing. We’ll kill a thing
if it leaves us with a pearl.