Things I Thought God Was Mad About

By Kabal Briar

​                 

My voice when I forgot to guard it.
The way music climbed into my shoulders.

The boy in class whose name I wrote nowhere

and everywhere.
My body for wanting comfort.

My laugh for arriving in color.
The mirror for telling the truth first.

The shirt I loved.
The walk I corrected.
The dream where nobody whispered.

The version of me who kept surviving

without permission.

I was wrong.
 

God was not mad at the flower.
God was mad at the hands

that called pruning love.

 

Kabal Briar is a queer Black femme writer, poet, educator, and storyteller from Erin, Tennessee, now based in the Pacific Northwest. His work explores voice, body, race, softness, Southern memory, queerness, and survival. He is the author of MOUTHY, a hybrid poetry and lyrical nonfiction collection.