Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

Akka of the unfurled hair and unsealed heart, why does it take forever 

to wear this body like it isn’t a hand-me-down, 

to shrug off the bulletproof vest even inside the home, to bring back every prodigal star 

and solemn comet under the skin, 

to stop winding the cells like a bandage round the red wound of our smallness? 

To feel the wind in our hair— and sometimes Akka replies: 

Enter the body like a summer ocean. 

Unzip the serpent skin and go swimming, sister. Your hair wind-soaked, your heart empty— 

no longer sealed, sold, concealed, betrothed, defined, transacted, underlined, contracted, sheared, broken, tonsured, misspoken, 

liberated, mended, emancipated, defended. 

That’s all it takes— 

go skinny-dipping in yourself.