As I mentioned in my second post, I was at an airport when I first picked up Rupi Kaur’s two collections of poetry. I didn’t buy them then, but I read many of the poems, put them back on their displays completely dumbfounded, bought a coffee from Starbucks, and boarded a plane for Mexico City (final destination Oaxaca). I started writing before the plane took off and didn’t stop until we landed 3.5 hours later. I was in the flow.

What follows is the very first poem I wrote on that flight:

It’s more painful to leave someone
who won’t miss you.
There’s nothing to hold on to.
You freefall
until you can land on yourself.
Until you’re grounded.
Until you are the ground.

But in that descent,
in that space of time,
the only constant is this lie–
you are incomplete.
It is your reality.
Yours to believe,
yours to disprove.

–the violet zoo