'Ăndreíā' is a noun characterising courage on the battlefield, the word shares a root with the greek word for men 'andros'. Both are a part of my patronym, chosen by an ancestor on a salt wind day. I have chosen to stop feeling affront towards it, and instead start to accept my own battleworn courage.

Listening Popstar by Tinashe
Reading Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ
Watching Journal with Witch by Tomoko Yamashita

Hysteria
Tonight, I darken your father’s doorstep again.
I sit at the bar and brace my lips against the rim of your glass,
I let you flood my senses,
And memories swirl around my incisors.
*
Eyelashes graze my cheek,
My hand grasps for the strength of your fingers,
You use my lower lip like a pacifier,
My tongue remembers the taste of your blood.
*
Dark sweet grapes,
That’s what you taste like,
Like the richest teranino,
Like elderflowers drowned in wine.
*
That night in spring was long ago.
When my newborn senses got acquainted with yours,
When the same Rihanna song played twice within twenty minutes,
When you toyed with my fingers as we waited near the bathroom stalls.
*
Weeks went by before I was sober again.
Before I saw the cracks in the paint,
Before I slid my fingers against the board,
And discovered you were chalk.
*
But the night is young,
And my stomach empty,
And I long to wrap my arms around something.
*
So let me have this,
A few glasses of you,
*
A sip of blood in the moonlight.