It is September,
somehow. I have grown
and I have paid for it.
Another wasted summer bent
in fruitless prayer below
the patron saint of capital
and her most famous face.
Stoic and stateless, I run
from nothing. Past life a stone
in my pocket. Memory an unbreakable fever.
I wasn’t always this way, but who am I
if not made in Your image, O God, man
of all men, the apple’s engineer. I fell
and I found gravity. I ate, which is to say
I sinned. I did not mean to suffer
but alas, I was a girl, body embalmed by semen
and sweat, crumpled form a monument
to its murderers. How I wanted
to be good, how it ruined
the rest of me: I was born again
on the seventh day, all pain
and shame and yellow light.
And You said, Let her bleed.
And so I did.

As a nod towards Marina Abramović's performative piece, "Rhythm 0," this poem operates similarly, whereas I, the reader, am given a vulnerable object, the speaker, who is wrestling with the nature of selfhood, virtue, and the acceptance of their physical body. The desperation of the speaker to understand exactly who they are in the context of what they are given--how one is supposed to live--is almost shocking. The poem strains; the poem enacts a beginning and an end.
— Luther Hughes, 2022 Poetry Contest Judge