The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Maybe the Body by Asa Drake

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To Someone Who’s Heard, I Love You, Too Many Times

Your friend explains having been in a room
filled with other people who, like you and your friend,
collect words from parents. The words
[                                                                ]
don’t come together into a language.
And the person on the stage expressed deep shame
for a project where she had tried to speak
but misspoke in a language
for which she had no teacher.
This is what you most fear. In one language,
you are the perpetual infant. You point to the moon
and call it payneta moon, once every 28 days.
Nanay gave you what is specific. Not the general
name for the moon [                 ].
                                                        Everything you say
timing and intimacy has shaped.

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