I want
something to call my own, I want
someplace I can call home, I want
someone who always picks up
when I call.

I want
that which is everyone’s birthright
like a watery cross
painted on my forehead by patriarchy
grace that seems to have skipped me
at the baptismal font of culture
that wasn’t built to sanctify me.

I want
to find my fellow travelers
those misfits and oddballs like me, the ones
who change expectations
and skew the middle
with our alien eyes and strange voices.

I want my tribe, I want
what humans before civilization
never had to want.
It was bestowed on arrival
with that first gasp of air
by our amphibian lungs;
that first cry that declared:
I am here!

I want
to want for nothing
I need
to just survive.

© S. Rinderle, September 2023

Image: SHANNON DRAWE/ISTOCKPHOTO/THINKSTOCK