This REFUSAL poem was originally accepted by Palette Poetry but was withdrawn by the author in protest.

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When I can’t write theory, I write poems, my friend tells me.
I turn off my laptop
and stare at the moon. Last night,
in the corner of a walled garden,
I studied the lines of our faces.
Today, the architectures lingering
in the spaces between us.

Study is what you do with other people, Moten says.
I quote Mitski
and you tell me Eli said the same
thing to you. The same line, a pause,
a note of affirmation.

We make a study of the sounds that emit
from our bodies
when we confront divinity.
We make a study of asylums, of cryptocurrencies,
of the food we put into our mouths.

The sun goes down and we study it too. And as it emerges,
the moon, a hole of light, pierces the sky.

It goes crazy, you say of the moon.
Crazy how beneath us, the water in the soil cycles
like the tides.
Crazy how fish follow the moon’s rhythms
in their journey from the deep ocean
to the shore.

I took notes
and wrote it’s an honor to share this world with you
on Twitter, and I meant you, and Mitski,
and our friends, and the moon.
I meant, when I die, which I must do,
I will have studied with you.

I will have come to you on a Friday
bearing nothing but my own being,
and a tired body, and the capacity only
to recite a list of texts
and call it company.

Before Mitski said nothing in the world belongs to me,
I was listening to people debate
the legitimacy of my body.
I was waking up at noon,
webs of death lingering in my bones,
confronting the insignificance of my mourning.

And still, you made time for me.
I came to you with nothing to say,
and you let me say nothing.

My love is mine, all mine.
We know what Mitski means.
When she looks at the moon, we are looking at it too.
It is the same moon. Not because of geography
or astronomy or whatever.
Precisely some opposite thing.