let it not be confused
let no one else's name
ring throughout these sentences
let this be a hatchet
let me put this to rest
this is not a test
i don't want to think
about shipwrecks anymore
i am tired of folding apologies
into origami birds
and placing them
at the headstones to your tantrums
this is not is not geology class
these are promises
written on razorblades
      & if you are getting choked up
        then maybe you should be
maybe we should be buried
with our telescopes face down
my mouth is full of sorry
all for being honest
we are falling out of orbit
we are burning bystanders
so cast away your callous condolences
because no one is clapping
in this waist deep water
this is not a baptism
so do not tell strangers
that this was a chance to drown
any differently
i am not a catalogue
of constellations you cannot name
this is not mythology
so stop believing your horoscope
i am not a wishing well
i am just a wall for you
to paint post nuclear fallout & antonyms for catharsis on
we destroy the things
that are not ours-
the wanton ways
we embody wrecking *****
and then cry over the rubble
this is not a heap or a mosaic
this is leaping
off a thousand story building
with no one to catch you
at the bottom & maybe
that's why some quiet moments
are so fragile, maybe that's why butterflies have mimicry
your words are black powder
and poetry is your musketry
i guess that makes me your blindfold

Forgive yourself
Perfect was never a word suited for you
Love yourself
Everything comes back to this
Love your sister
She has been picked apart, degraded, and has an internal war eating her from the inside out
Love your brother
He has a time stamp of deliverance to a life of incarceration, bullets released from an absence of sense, lack of educated, blind ambitious followers.
Raise your head
You are a Goddess created
with disarming beauty in mind.
Continue to place one foot in front of the other
You are meant and strongly designed for forward movement.
Take no steps back, do not bow down your head, do not close your mouth
In fear that judgment will fall
It will, but you must speak anyways.
Your voice is imperative
to the growth of lost girls who are unsure what real women are made of.
Your voice is imperative to the peaking of the minds of men unsure what to look for in a Queen, show him.
Your voice is imperative to the readjustment of the image of
Black Women with large voices
Black Women with high diction
Black Women with love language
Black Women with literary genius
Black Women filled with nothing less than the peace & love God has manifested within us.
Black Women
Black Women
Black Women
Who love Black men like double chocolate moist bliss
Who love White men like dark roast coffee filled with cream
Who love Latino men like Butterscotch candy dipped in chocolate
The list goes on
Black Women who love like we are bound to implode if we don't give the universe what it is that we need back.
Black Women
Your Mother
Black Women
Your Sister
Black Women
Your Friend
Black Women
Your Lover
Black Woman
Love Her.

Few people are like "h" in honest,
Silently, honestly exist...

Leave her
like how you would end
your favorite book.

All the markings you made
will be her ever after
on the pages you took.

Scan her down with those eyes
that once showed interest but are now
excited to read her very last word.

You would barely remember the details,
the marks, her errors, and lines
and will soon forget her.

And by then, you'll leave her
with pages mangled and folded
and befouled on the edges.

She's just one of your many books
piled in dusty shelves;
waiting in line to be forgotten.

love is crooked lines. love is eyes that sting. love is short people tiptoeing. possibly the smell of a forest fire. love is the waves crashing against the shore. the sky changing hues. a watercolour palette with all the neon colours now blue. love is pairs of birds above us, fleeing from the cold. or maybe a curtained window blocking our view of the world. be my guest, interlock fingers. kiss rosy cheeks.  light the bridges. pay to be on board a shipwreck. love is you in the hallway, asking me to leave. love is okay, i'll go soon. love is you're right, i'll go now.

you've always been the fool thinking that you made words beautiful, thinking you gave them purpose, thinking that you sculpted them with your sandpaper tongue as you carved down their imperfections
when in reality, it was the very same words that made you beautiful in my eyes, the sickly sweet delusion i've entrapped myself in like a firefly in your crystal jar of thoughts
you can't spark a fire within me with well rehearsed words and perfected lines from any old script only to leave me out to dry