I never learned to fight, but the beast is in me somewhere. Battle tests storm in; some arrive like a whirlwind of weapons and others are shattered snail shells. Small destruction has its place. I lost the one fistfight that I was gifted. I bled like a broken fountain pen. I was lost in a series of disconnecting roads that season. I was testing God’s plan for me. My mugshot looked like my great-grandmother who looked like a beast. Surely, she could kick the shit out of the patriarchy, fuck a girl up poem by flower-fisted poem. Under the guard of her dark eyes, she kneaded the focaccia dough like a tentative pacifist. By the clasp of her lips, I can see that her throat held a gravelly song. Her dagger tongue has sliced through time and arrived again in me. Her unapologetic body held the eggs known to grow thick-boned girls, and her hands, her hands, they could hurt you bad, but instead they chose to be the doves born from a top hat.