Imagine: the four chambers of my heart each loaded with a bullet, each beat another revolution in my chest, my throat a barrel, my curled tongue a trigger. I believe in spirits, in every fag and queer I've heard and allowed to pass through my body and into the next. I believe in possession, believe each metal slug entering our bodies tonight is a history we can't escape, forged in factories across this country by men who feel threatened by love. And when I stare into my reflection one last time tonight, I know each pupil will become an exit wound. I've spent my life learning to lie to myself, but tonight the truth will enter my body, will hurt, will kill, will leave an echo.

Steven Sanchez is a CantoMundo Fellow, a Lambda Literary Fellow, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Fresno State. His chapbook, To My Body, is forthcoming from Glass Poetry Press and his poems have appeared in Crab Creek Review, Nimrod, Word Riot, Rogue Agent, The Cossack Review, and others.

Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published weekly by Glass Poetry Press. All contents © the author.