The vermillion sun salts our mouths,
warmth brimming with the sapor of brine.

I write on my arm the torrid air a salve
for wounds pleasure can make known again.

Why is it important that we remember
the metrics of marking time? All I ever am
haunted by the naming of things,

the finality of definition
of anything being anything
more than what is.

Fascinated by turning toward, becoming
haloed from a moving silhouette—

I write nonsense, vague and unspecific
defenses, keeping me from being known.

Next to me, someone is talking (to me?)
of love. They say we make it
specific to our language of need.

Ashley Taylor is a Kentucky poet, director, and educator who designs collaborative writing spaces and performing arts events. Ashley is the author of The Metamorphosis of Narcissus, part of a chaplet series by queer and trans poets from Damaged Goods Press, 2019. Their writing has been honored with a 2020 Artist Enrichment Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and a 2020 Lambda Literary Fellowship Award from Sundress Academy for the Arts.