Roads that eventually intersect after miles of traveling
Little black girls
From different worlds but somehow became a part of the others'

Always laughing at the world for not know how deep the river flows and where the roads connect
Praising the others melanin and defiant hair as more than just dead skin cells
You cheered for me harder than I did myself

I cried when I heard the news that my friend wasn't mine anymore and that those little black girls were growing up and apart. Laughs echoed in my mind and pushed tears out.

Open letter


Dear B

It overwhelms me to write this because this week I've been speechless. So speechless. You've witnessed this as my eyes suddenly watered because staring into your eyes showed me something I had never seen. I always knew, but after five months apart, and seeing that stare through a screen, I forgot the magic that lies behind it and the feelings it stirs in me. That stare alone reminds me of everything I've always wanted and never knew how to get, never knew what it was worth if I ever did. I've been searching for this thing forever. Anxious and needy and impatient. So I apologize to the men I never loved, because I thought maybe "love" was something you speak out loud when you crave their body or just want someone to stay around just a little longer. I mistook all of them for something only you could be, hoping that they could fill the gap I never knew was always going to be empty until you came along. But I never knew until I knew.

Loving you gives me a new life that is lighter, easier, yet fuller at the same time. Being with you, holding your hand, knowing that I am yours and you are fully mine, it cements a feeling of peace, finally. And I just never would have thought as we crossed paths that summer 2013 during soar, I'd fall so in love with that brown boy from California wearing a tank top so boastful of his LA roots. But I did, and each day you allow me to be yours still feels brand new. Five months without you can be described as "it literally knocked her down at night, and raised her up in the morning, for when she dragged herself off to bed, having spent another day without his presence, her heart beat like a gloved fist against her ribs." Well, I'm not Hagar nor you Milkman, and my love is not affliction, but I ached those months to be next to you long enough for pecks to turn to passionate kisses that excluded the world. Waters rushing through me strong enough to erase anyone that is not you from my body, and force my mouth to  refute those who ever visited. "You never had me, I am not who I was then. I am only his, all of his."

tears of love and happiness
creeps in my soul, and swells my heart.
In the flesh.
He's real.

32,000 feet off the ground
I've never been closer to the stars
They always told me to reach
I never knew how long my arms could go
Black girl magic

*midnight on a flight back home

Media naranja

When we were walking through the streets trying to find souvenirs, there was a store named la media naranja. *"Do you know what that means?"

"Orange middle? Half orange?"

He laughed.
"It's when you find the one for you.
Your girl, your boy. And you just fit. You find your other half. The other half to your orange."

*"Like a soulmate."

Black born
Black careless
Black die

Black boy
Black born
Black queer
Black love
Black die

Black born
Black careless
Black born
Black love
Black poor
Black die
Black cry
Black guilty
Black spring
Black forget
Black content
Black die
Repeat

Black girl
Black born
Black love
Black beat
Black die

Black born
Black girl
Black hair
Black lip
Black body
Black hate
Black die

Black born
White world
Black
Careless boy girl queer
Black
Self loathing
Black
Born
Die black

Black breathe
Black finally breathe

Repeat

This is melanin and love and you can't fake this.
Mixing shades of ancestry and bloodlines and pigments that stick to the core.
Somewhere someone peeked in a black woman's ear, straight through to her mind,
Saw a village dancing in her head!
Fires lit, drummers surrounding, same steps synchronized because they were born like this
Nothing but magic how
all the time these drums sounded off in her head
so of course her walk holds steady as a drum
Of course her hips swing with the beat as she steps with the villagers.
Her life becomes syncopated with rhythm
Dancing in all her movements
Never missing a beat