i will speak but let us clarify.

let us make known the endless bounds of our want.

i say our because this want extends in all directions

and all ways beyond the limits of this my body. i am all

the hunger of all my ancestors. i am all the hunger i

have spoken of in all my fifty years and all my years to

come. i am all the hunger of all the descendants of my

heart. my heart i say because there will be none of my

body only of my spirit.

i speak all our want channel all our want dream all our

want weep all our want.

i have wept for half a century. i was born weeping. my

bones have never broken because they were formed in a

womb made of tears not amniotic fluid. my mother

mourned her mother’s death as my flesh knit itself

together. i only ever saw my mother shed three tears.

they formed so slowly and so against her will that they

were solid and heavy and shattered like crystal when

they hit the floor.

i was born carrying all of her unshed tears.

i was born carrying all her mother’s unshed tears.

and so every morning and every noon and every night

my tongue longed for sweetness because the salt of my

tears never faltered. but we stubborn survivors will

adapt to anything and so when the tears were fewer and

far between i began to long for the taste of the ocean

and my flesh like waves rushed the shore and rushed

the shore and fought the push and pull of the tide.

want with constraints is a screaming thing.

want without end is a howling thing.

in the tongue of my mother’s father’s people, my child-

name means tongue. but know this my tongue is not a

forked tongue not a divided tongue not a mutilated

tongue not a burning tongue. my tongue is an infinite

tongue. and an infinite tongue requires an infinite

mouth and an infinite tongue that requires an infinite

mouth requires an infinite voice.

one day i will die. but i have never feared dying.

i only fear being silent.

and here i am. a hundred thunderstorms in the shape of

a woman. what will i do with all our hunger. centuries

of hunger. the hunger of thousands. the desperate

hunger of the living. the unending hunger of the dead.

there is no satisfying it. no silencing it. no numbing it.

we may forget names. we may forget faces. but we will

never forget the stories. never forget the hunger. we do

not dream lightly. we roar in our dreams.

we roar with an infinite tongue.