Grit sustains me.
I hold on both soft and tight,
a self-embrace unlike no other.
Conspirators
seek to overlay
to coexist
amid my red-blue veins,
these emanating cords of my within.

My words belong to me.

Mine to invert as I please.
Mine to wrestle, to subjugate
to contemplate, to savor.
Mine to coalesce toward
my own redress.
Others’ steely wits resolve to upend
yet I remain true.

That lovely muscle
that beats for —and of — me,
moving toward
benign forbearing,
loyalty to self: rewarded.
These peaceful pebbles glisten just for me.

I care not if for no other.