Borders Were Always Negotiable

The map is older than the line on it.

Before the border, there was a valley. Before the valley, there was a rain pattern. The rain did not ask for permission to fall on both sides.

Nations, cuisines, genders, species, languages, selves — the catalog of things w

Nations, cuisines, genders, species, languages, selves —

the catalog of things we thought were solid —

look closely:

all of them drawn

in very soft pencil.

The storm moves across a coast the diplomat has never visited. The disease does not check the passport. The song knows the harbor in three keys at once.

Identity is not a coordinate.

Identity is a series of crossings

that never quite finishes.

The lines were always negotiable. The lines were only ever a way of slowing down what was going to cross them anyway.

Keep crossing.