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

I wish I could write you a love song
Singing a broken melody that never could find fluidity
until
you.
A compilation of complications.

It's a sad song hearing someone lie to themselves.
Mutually excluding love and success
Making excuses that one means sacrificing the other
They always pick success over those arguments that make you fight to stay together
Forgetting that success does not birth generations
But love always births richness

Just keep praying
You're allowed to cry
Be frustrated
Demand answers
But just keep praying

And they would never know that somedays I went hungry
Spreading out snacks
Not being able to spare anything because it would be less to get me by
Choosing between toothpaste or a pack of ramen because my mom "could" only give me $175 in the course of almost 4 months.

I'd hate people, half because of who they are half because of what they had. Security. Infinite meals. No worries. They'd never know when my buzz wore off that I awoke from my dreams in a panic. Ashamed that I finally let myself EAT, have a drink, and a laugh carelessly. Something that wasn't plain white rice or stolen toast or cereal because my host mom was away for the weekend.

It's scary really being that close to starving all the time because you know if you really EAT you'll have nothing left. So you convince yourself that you could stand for a diet and lose all that EATING you were doing when your drawer still had money in it.

for the first time in your life, you have to depend on people other than mom and dad because what they have just wasn't enough. You became that relative or friend. The one carefree in her photos or status, but anxiety filled in direct messages and phone calls.

You're jealous because they don't have to worry about their family being irritable with them because they just had to EAT. And when you come back home you'll have souvenirs and a few pounds gone too. Smiling because this is what you wanted.

Aching
It eats away at you and starves you hungry
You guard it, store it for winter or a rainy day
But eventually
You're convinced more will never come
Once this is all gone
And you're more afraid of the not knowing
Then the waiting
So you go over and over and over in your mind
Wondering and doubting and trembling
Pretty soon it'll have eaten all you have and you were so busy worrying you didn't taste what was in front of you
You ached with hunger all those years trying to preserve the it
But it dwindled despite all your guarding and storing for those rainy days
You wanted it so long, so bad, you sacrificed not having it so you could have it longer
Except now it's gone
And you never got what you really ached for
Out of fear of losing it all some day
You were cautious and careful and strategic and a planner and a realist
All the things not needed in love.

Dear
Brown colored boy,
Mine
Shining in all your melanin filled armor I salute you.
The soldier you are as tall as the tree that bore the wood of the cross they burned on martins lawn.
You burn brighter than those flames
You ignite something in me that wants to melt into your melanin crossing legs and arms and becoming tangled in ligaments that look more like trees before they were torn apart to become those burning crosses.
Mine
Eye closed I imagine you holding a brown boy bore from my trees,
Laying him on your bare chest
Loving him because he's your own.
Not just mine anymore,
I'll look at you both in fear seeing those burning crosses become shining badges and sirens in the distance
Not just mine anymore

Celebrating something you briefly learned and you expect a few dozen people in the plaza, calm and content celebrating the May revolution that happened over 200 years ago.

You step off the subway, walk up the stairs to the sidewalk and it's foggy from firecrackers and grills filled with chorizo. Banderas waving with Eva and Peron's faces. Drums pounded as the people sing VIVA LA PATRIA.

You're alone, but somehow not afraid because even though this holiday isn't yours, you recognize the nationalism they sing of. A nationalism only a porteno could possibly know and love and understand and feel and celebrate. But for that day, you overcame your extranjero and smiled at the kids waving their flags, your friend using two hands to eat choripan, the hunt for locro, and the mosh pit that was trying to get the closest view of the concerts and firecrackers.

When you return to the states they'll remember it as Memorial Day, but you have learned how to celebrate 25 de mayo.

"They'll ask how you lived without things, when you really lived your whole life without knowing they existed. Deprived some may say, but you've made it 20 years without it, and somehow you think it doesn't matter.

They don't really know you before this. That your childhood consisted of running through parking lots, visiting the same park and still finding it like new, now laters hot flamins, peach soda and hoping you'll get to grandmas house that weekend. Brain still being mocked by the Eric B and Rakim your dad always blasted on any road trip.

They've never been to Hampton street or seen the cars drive by with their bass booming harder than ever playing the trap music that invades your house and makes your window shake to the rhythm.

That's where I'm from.
And somehow we both ended up here in buenos aires. Although I never left the states, never made it to the big city. Never got there.
Where I'm from we're hood rich and this just doesn't happen.
Deprived they'll call us, but i never saw a frown even when we pinched pennies.

Mama explained "there are rich people, and those just making it." We always made it and I'm just glad mama got me here."

You taught her how to not fear the future, I've learned to open up to forever. Timeless.

They ask how we deal with distance, I say we just grow closer. Love of my life, he's my friend.

And if they ask, I'll smile and let them know I've never known this kind of love before.

Stumbled across the ocean. Always wondered where the first place I'd find it would be. Stumbled into Argentina where the black girls are scarce, I wonder how many have seen the ocean? Up until now it was just blue space on the map. 20 years old and never seen the ocean, have you even lived? Who deprived you of such a simple thing? 70% of this earth you never touched or seen. Stumbled into argentina and I finally saw the ocean. South America granted a long lost dream.

Two am.
Irritation swelled all day I couldn't help but throw it all at him. Giving up so much claiming exasperation and nothing left to give. He stopped and asked why are you so angry, this isn't like you...he broke the flood gates to all I had pent up. Emotions I didn't know were there. He sailed through my floodgates to the root of my anger and saved me from drowning. Baby, love is a life vest and you gave me a chance. CPR, breathing the girl you knew back into the body she had abandoned. Baby, you are every friend, every man, everything I have ever loved and God doesn't make mistakes so I stopped questioning why and how and just cried as I prayed. Thank you, thank you. I don't deserve the love you give, but God doesn't make mistakes. I asked for a man in his image and he sent me you.

I'm starting to think Saturday's are supposed to be late mornings because breakfast lasts longer that way. Leaving around 4 to catch a settled sun. Hundreds of merchants in the park as the live music goes from the close bluegrass bop to the distant rock drums. Saturday's have become ears filled with Spanish noises you've learned to ignore because the pain of dancing still in your toes from your night of bachata speak louder. Walking to the ferria as the sun settles and since you're alone you finally get to listen and watch without being interrupted bites of alfajores sweeter with the solitude. Finding your love in each couples palms as they hold hands, remembering how much you miss your boyfriend as you walk in the direction of the sun. So settled and strong it looks as if it's rising like your hips used to do as you felt loved. Steps feel lighter and your shirt blows with the wind and for once you start to think this is what You always wanted out of this. Finding your face in the rips of a passerbys jeans, feeling your muscles as you wonder where the stairs lead to. Today you had time. Watching backflips that demanded applause and handcrafts that merchants hope you'll take off their hands. All the while it's only 6 o clock on a Saturday and you feel as if the day won't be as perfect as it is right then. Feeling like the first kiss on the Friday night, you waited and it finally came. Saturdaze.

Fingers stuck in time grazing complexions similar to cinnamon.
Feeling sweetness not too unlike the cinnamon that melts to create your skin.
My host mother hands me cinnamon to sprinkle lightly over softened apples.
I can't help but think of you.

Wanted to read about black girl happily ever afters and the heroine that was and loved her hero.
My pen once itched with sadness and could only bleed tears.
Needed a manual to teach me how to be me
How to love when it was too hard
Because I was too busy scribbling aching stories and screaming for answers
Not noticing the happily ever after was falling in front of me

I love you.

Black bodies
The most hated body
The most athletic body
Because we are taught to run
Before we are born
Born into lives
That are only safe if white

Anything worth having is worth fighting for.
I fought to get here,
I have to fight to stay
Living a life that's so extraña
Smelling air I'll soon olvido
So I'll have to learn to take mental pictures as I camino por las calles
Como yo espero para el colectivo
For the first time I knew where I was going and it started to become a habit
Home becoming more and more this city where I know very little
Like a niña in kindergarten again
Starting over
Recomenzar
Mama parece more and more unlike my face
But heart just the same
Language different but she's mastered estreno in all languages
An expert in ayúdame
I'm so small in this big city
Wide eyed and afraid
But I knew where I was going for the primera vez
God brought me here quedar.

***** with brownness that I can't wash away.
Born into a filth that made me unhygienic before my feet could touch the ground
Before my hands could grasp objects other than my mothers hand or chest or face
Guilty before the gavel was struck
Before the cell was locked
Before the siren rang off
Guilty of brownness that is not innocent until proven guilty
Rather brown until proven worthy
Brown until the grave
assigned to us before we have a chance to see the world and become who we're suppose to be
Graves are becoming just as crowded as those ships they brought us here in
Stuffed and cramped like the cells they keep us in
Piling bodies on bodies while blood cells fill the avenues we march in
Graves over crowded
Hearts over hurt
Innocent with a guilt I can't wash away.
Our mothers can't hold us now.

And I'll never get used to hearing "I love you" each time feels like the first, and finally I can say "I love you too"

And when you say "tell me you love me, I just need to hear it" I'll always mean it. Each time meaning it more and more.

I've loved you since summer hellos and winter goodbyes.

my black arms
black enough to be infinite
all colors combined to create blackness
the darkest of all things

these black coils that sprout out
sprout slowly
sprout curly
sprout insecurely
bouncy like the wires that we find under trampolines
bouncy bouncy bouncing
on these springs that sprout of my head
she pulled one and watched it spring back to its original position

lips brighter than roses
pink with the kiss of illumination
radiating with fullness as they sit on the blackness that is my face

"está es tu replica"
my twin whose skin is the blackest
her hair made of wires
lips pink as carnations
her dress the color of the sky
I find irony that her dress is day and she is night

A figurine that is my twin
A reminder this is what she knew me as before she knew me
This is who I'll be after she's known me

I am black the infinite night sky that is infinite enough to intrude on day

I find you over and over
Your face in my palms
In the walls
In the windows
I daydream of you when Spanish becomes romance and romance is you.
I twist this ring until it's so fixated on my finger a weight is lifted when I take it off. I feel light and strange because each time I twist this ring I am more and more yours than I was the minute before. Wondering how can I love you more than I already do?

I've loved you since before I knew what love looked like. But I had faith God wouldn't bring you if I wasn't ready. So I've loved you ever since because God kept us in touch and when I asked you what your story was you let me in and every night you beared a new piece. I've loved you since our intimacy was merely behind a screen and before we both knew what chemistry could grow to be. Ive loved you since you taught me how to be bare, fully clothed and still naked from all the things I thought I needed to be to be loved. When all along I just needed you.

Of all the things I dreamed for,
I never knew you were one of those dreams.
Somewhere hidden in my cranium behind reality, could've been, and meant to be.

I'd do it all over again
if it guaranteed each time we'd end up here.

Naked
Sacrifice your clothes
All those things covering your heart
Give me your body
Willingly I'll accept and feel away any
Blockade that has kept you from me
I want to feel your beautiful

forehead to forehead
Eyes peering over the rims of glasses
Arms around waists
Hands pulling your shirt as I whispered through tears
i really do love you ya know

I laid on his chest knowing it was the day.
I breathed deeply trying to cope
As he rubbed my back when he felt a tear hit his neck
I closed my eyes and held tighter
Wanting to take him everywhere
Red eyed and runny nosed
I was so sadly in love.

And I sat.
In his bed without a person to share it with.
I filled his room and saw it in a new silence.
It isn't as romantic if he's not here.
So I sat.
In his bed waiting for the door to open and he walk in glad I'm waiting for him in this peach gown and yellow socks
Hair still curled lips still purple
Laying just waiting
Sitting in a silence that's unfamiliar and doesn't feel like home.
My belly hungry for him to feed me
I'm a bad wife
I don't cook or clean
But I have the sitting pretty and just waiting down to a t.

Where do the lost souls go?
Do they?
dissolve with our tears
heal with our wounds
pass like time

where can we find all the things they have taken from us?
the spirit she's drained from my body
the strength from my mind

lord
tell me why the broken seek to break me?
because as i scream with anger
my lips quiver in sadness
and in that moment i'm hopeless again
wondering if i am the only one born into this

suffocating

I stood in the mirror and looked at everything.
Everything that makes up this body of mine.
I claim as mine and fall in love with every inch.
It's liberating
It's sensual
It's healthy
Because I look at myself,
I take the time to learn this body
Love this body
Own this body
Unapologetically
I stood in mirror and looked at everything
And loved everything

So much love inside of me
I don't think she could understand
Because she doesn't know how to love herself
So it's like explaining being rich to a poor man
It's something he just don't know how to be.

I know your mouth
Because I learned it
Paced your breaths with your movements
The flicker of your eyelashes with the intensity of your heartbeat.

I know your mouth
Because I yearned it
Missed the rampages you'd create all over me
Forcing me to use muscles I didn't know I had
Craving a mouth I never knew I'd want

I know your mouth
Because I earned it
Patience
I'm more comfortable with you than i am by myself sometimes

I used to dream about the day our mouths would meet.

In love like the real kind
The kind you see in movies where people are crying because they are so moved by what another person can make them feel.
The kind you find in silence when you hear their voice and you respond by whispering I love you.
The real when you can ask anything say anything unapologetically
The real when you fall asleep and wake up in love one of the few consistent feelings you experience on the daily
The kind that makes you run to touch them when asked if anyone has changed you as a person.
They'd find my fingerprints all over you baby.

Waiting is for the weak hearted
The desperate
The uncertain
But in the rare case waiting is love
It is the most painful of them all

&Although; they had met a year ago,
In that moment it seemed for the first time she really knew him.
And when she knew him, she could only love him for all he was and could be.

Met this boy when I was 18 years old,
Standing in a line
I'd never forget how he appeared in my dream
I didn't know then that soon enough I'd fall all at once
Fall through the ups downs in betweens
Never forgetting
Even when I prayed to do so
Now I pray to never lose sight
Because you told me you love me like the real kind.
And I knew I could love you too.
Even if it means forever.

If this is what love feels like, I will never fault someone for chasing it, being addicted, constantly in a rush to get back.
Once you know it, you can't forget it. When you know it you'll realize how wrong you were about every mediocre feeling that came before it.

This is
Something I've never known, but always knew the answers were within my reach. Somewhere. I never thought I'd find them in you.

Love people whose names you aren't afraid to speak at high volumes.
Names that can stain your teeth with melancholy as they paint over laugh lines of euphoria.
Love a name that tells you a story as it rolls off your tongue, syllables as sweet as children in summertime.
What is in a name?
Mothers, fathers, lovers, wanderers.
Love a name worth remembering.

Breaths heavy like the rocks that plummet in your gut.
Unfaltering, uncompromising
Hard like difficulty like it is loving someone like it is letting go like it is digesting rocks
Because rocks aren't meant for your gut
So it's hard
Loving someone isn't meant for letting go
So it's never easy.
Let's be easy like apples pies, no, bean pies because those are more rare
Easy like falling without fear because you have someone to hold on to.

Idk if that's a good thing or bad thing, but we gone make every day count when we're together when I get back. Promise*

It's scary that after a month I get so anxious to not be next to you. What's worse is a month is going to turn to five. Can we make these days count forever? Love me as if you never knew how to love someone else. As if waiting is the only possible option you have because nothing else feels quite the same,

...because that's how I feel about you.

So if you ever feel like you're in this alone, remember there's someone in South America that feels just as alone as you.

For a few minutes he just stares in silence, I stare back.
Wondering what he's thinking
As I think and overthink about the eagerness that swells in my belly when he stares into my heart. Hoping he won't read what I'm writing in my head. Don't stop staring.

i really don't feel like talking to anyone but you.
Just make that stare last forever.

Noches como estas son las razones me encanta estar a mi casa. No gritando ni discutiendo, no.  La calma de una rutina que ha sido la misma por años, hasta que ser una niña. Necesité esto antes de yo salir para argentina. Necesito noches como estos para recordarme de todas las personas y qué bendiciones ofrecen el mundo. Para darme inspiración y fuerza a hacerme la persona soy destinada volver. Una pieza de la casa siempre en mi mente.