After Joelle Barron

These eyes are travelers,

watching you inject

your gender, empty

needles collecting

on floorboards

show the process

of loving your body

and these eyes search

inside pages, while

my mind is inside

the blank spaces,

but these hands did

not need language

to feel something

beautiful and these

ghosts know it like

they know my name,

I’m burning and these

ghosts burn them-

selves into my going,

they keep branching, diving,

and these eyes try following

as these hands kiss each

tree they find which

makes a city quiet and

the city erased my name

and the city can fall

silent but it is different than

the absence of sound.

Ayşe Lara (she/her/they/them) is a UBC Creative Writing student, studying and living on the unceded territory of the Musqueam people. They hold an English BA from Trent University.