Quietly Proud

What separates

me from past selves I admonish?

A blacklist of dumb girls I update each year,

Determined to start afresh for the twenty-third, fourth

Fifth time.

To not get drunk and say things

That yank back like a bicycle chain.

To not start projects with zeal 

And abandon them rashly,

Plagued by the quiet pulse

Of a call I hung up.

I tend to do it all again- and then some.

But this year I feel tenderly unattached 

To the chains of thought and sense,

The body reshaped by triumph and pain

That walk in the world as Isabella

Even the versions that let wrong clothes wear her,

And unravelled with little encouragement

It won’t do to drift again, ceaselessly insecure

In the hum of insects I conjure to 

warn me of myself

I’m quietly proud of us all.