With a toothy lyricism at turns sly and forthright, Cárdenas's hunger to belongcarries him from a stove, bleeding "a hundred kinds of caldo" to his "determinedmitochondrial ancestors," a journey framed by generational struggles withaddiction, a queerphobic church, and the always-transforming land-littered withbottle caps and rusted tools, sealed below asphalt or carved into acequias, where astorm will one day return everything to the rising ocean.In conversation with Taos's rich artistic tradition, and the brutal, binding legacyof colonization, Cárdenas writes through his transition, acknowledging that "tobecome a man means a lifetime of needles like the man who raised me." Hereis pain and violence, but here, too, is the assurance that we are "built for thismetamorphosis" and can follow our past incarnations "over scorched earth neonwith new grass" to a future of our own making.