I know guys like you— Men who cut with glares instead of knives. Boys who brood to look refined. Sons who get high off cool-white lies, trustworthiness empty in hindsight. You think this is a Suessy-rhyme? You slam mouths with ancient books, and beat new perspectives with old ones passed down from white beards to black mustaches, and closed minds to open ones, which will shut with time. But most of all, you detest the whispering wisdom of my sisters. You prefer k

I drive with shoulders pulled tight, like it will hel me fit on streets

I planted words like seeds beneath my driveway in the construction trench that felt like a metaphor for all the ways I was torn open.

Yan Sison is a poet based on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Some of his works were published in Pearls, a creative writing anthology.