In this video, Jess shares their spoken word poem, "Transmutation."
"The word forgiveness agitates me.
A false absolution for evil deeds, irreparable.
Crimes of the flesh committed against my child body, and only now being resolved as secluding itself.
I am working to heal myself.
Surely you cannot apologize for a lifetime of relived and repeated trauma.
You were the first, but you certainly were not the last.
Your apology does not uncreate the foundation you laid for more hands, more mouths, more needs, more heat press boldly onto my frozen flesh.
My years of numb silence, believing I had demons on my back, calling out to the perverse need of the next.
Striving for nothing is what I'm doing now.
To feel nothing when I see an image of you.
Feel at peace when your name is called, or a story is shared.
Feel unbothered by the tingling hot memories of rage and sadness flashing through my skin.
Precious ancestors, I beseech thee, speak to me.
I am ready to receive the key to unlock my blossoming sanctity as I reclaim my sacred
Earth, pulling twisted vines and rotted weeds tangled through and through, carving you out of every fiber of me.
I owe you nothing.
May you be freed from every memory, every particle, and every element of me."
