Sand Bodied Florida Boy

Grayson's Sand Bodied Florida Boy is a love song to the first moment you felt believed in, when hope wasn't a question, but an answer in every breath you chose to take. It is a collection of poems about the flood breaking through the sandbags, and the person waving a flag on the other side, a lighthouse beacon of becoming, screaming your name. Hollering you home. This collection explores the reimagination of his boyhood, something he did not socially or biologically receive as a Black trans person, and how he grew to make sense of who he would become. It speaks to being an immigrant possibility dream for his Jamaican mother, who has never run from a hurricane but wonders every year about the sandbags, and how he began creating grace out of his name. Accepting that, sometimes, grace rhymes with grief and grief is a doorway word to the flood.