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

Ironic enough
You embody the man I despise when he is loved
That power you hold
I'm aware
You think I'm already yours
Just waiting for you to come claim your prize
now my eyes fill with realization
I refuse to give you more power
So I'll lower my brown pools when I once was warmed with the moment the stares would meet
I'll leave the room to show I don't yearn for your prescence
I will not let you be loved

Little do they know I have small fantasies imagining what life would be like if he were mine.
Not one he in particular, but just someone.

Lover of black men and all their
Flaws and glory.

I rather die alone by choice than to feel alone in another's presence.
At least I will always be mine.
I am mine no matter the day, hour, month, or phase.
Any time, any place
I don't care who's around

I am lovely and lonely
and that is better than that nausea you feel when what you thought was yours turned out to be
temporary
Your heart sinks to your gut
I don't want another person to be the reason I feel unwanted
I want my loneliness to be a choice
a temporary emotion
because I am never alone
As long as I am mine
*always

Her lips are dark like purple.
I stare and wonder how they got that way, not shocked when she whips a lighter out when it's requested.
Her boyfriend is a stoner so I'm not utterly shocked. I'm just shocked at the music that flows out of those purple lips. From high to low from hums to raps she keeps going no matter the song, so
easy. Just as easy as it is to listen. God
bless the DJ.

It is in these moments of utter nothing I know I am not meant to be here. We are only missed when we are far from home, far from others' convenience. Far, I want to be stretched across the borders,  full moments spent exploring. Take me somewhere where my mom can't call me back in a heartbeat and friends can't stop by on their way home. Away. Because I, by myself, do not measure up enough to be missed if I am within distance. By anyone. So only 1 person will call, probably because he's so far... I just want someone to play cards with me in the grass, walk to the park with and talk about life. Breathing with the breeze when there are no words left to speak. People lack compassion, not realizing sometimes you just need to be in someone else's prescence besides your own. They deprive you of this. Leaving you with a solitude that was once so sweet that it rotted before you. Now brown, once the ripest green. One day I will be missed, that's why I always want to leave.

Just be you
In this world of us
Doors closed

Trap them all out
Let's just stay here
No one will have to know

Hopefully they'll forget about us
Just for a few more hours
Have to savor these moments of you
And me
Just being us

Breathe. No one to listen.
No one to repeat.
No one to judge.
Just us
Being us.

To Whom It May Concern:

If I've learned anything from this, it would have been my fascination. So easily I become consumed and entranced by those that seem to appear within perfect timing. I manipulate my mind into believing in fairy tales, but ever so often I am reminded that this is Wisconsin. I am not a princess that will one day be whisked into a happily ever after, or so life leads me to believe.

Unlike a happily ever after, my story continues. No sequel to be written, I stumble through trying to regain what is left of this. The problem is that I continue. The easy way out is to stop before things get too deep, but by the time you realize the depth you've created, your heart won't leave as easily.

If someone asked me 9 months from  now if I regretted anything I'd say yes. Yes, I do regret many things. I regret showing weakness that is my constant return. My heart was always more afraid of recovering, my mind feared my sanity. I regret the vulnerability I gave, the secrets I admitted, the loyalty, the passion, my smiles. I regret allowing myself recovery then continuously bringing myself back to the same point.

For a person to give up on you while you still are head over heels hurts. Your pride goes. The second time around, I sit in the exact same position asking myself how I let this happen again. To know that the person you love is giving up on you for someone else hurts the pride more. Knowing that at the end of the day you weren't the person they wanted vulnerability, secrets, loyalty, passion, or smiles from. You came second, and it would forever remain that way.

I was in a relationship with myself maybe. Somewhere along the line I became too bold and asked you to join. I believed things were as you said, but slowly I saw them for what they really were. I fell in love with the lie, but everything I gave was real. So many poems and smiles you've inspired.

It's hard to love a friend and lose love without feeling lost. Staring in silence wishing you could find answers to questions you're too cowardly to ask. Afraid the answer can only break you more.
i fell in love the way you fall asleep, slowly at first then all at once

Falling out, however, is a whole other battle.

because i defend you when they can't seem to understand
holding on because i know what they don't
and it's possible they never will

because when i laid in your arms, i looked in your eyes and asked
where did you come from?
wondering how we got here
when just a week ago i was panicking at the thought of not being able to ever go there

because i watched you sleep and my heart sped up at the sound of your breath
and my skin went cold at your every touch
how did we get here?

because even as the sun rose you wanted to stay in that moment
why are you leaving?

oh, but honey

i would never.

We grow up and fall in love with ppl and things that were never meant for us. We make these things our own and become more alive than we ever were before.

Just when I was thinking my crush was one sided, he asked me if I wanted to dance. Usually I only dance with someone when there's enough people dancing that it doesn't really matter, but this time I didn't care. I wasn't (that) drunk, and there weren't that many people there. I wanted to dance with him though. So as he grabbed my hand as R.Kelly played I felt his hips behind me, his hands keeping me balanced, his back slipping lower as his legs opened wider. I saw people looking but I just didn't care, he didn't either. And before the song ended we left because his hands kept wandering to my **** "So you're just gonna keep caressing my *** huh?" "You never said stop". I didn't.

So we snuck out into a stairwell for him to stare at me until I smiled, telling me how weird I am in the best way. And I stared back until his eyes wandered down to my lips, my chest, my hips. Finally.

If you miss me like a child with widespread arms,
I miss you like an Indian summer.
Hello to fall, goodbye to summer.
All the heat in the midst.

I miss you like a goodbye that hasn't happened yet.

So wrong its right.
My mind and heart disconnect.
They never really got along.
The right choice never really
Captivated my heart
And the wrong choice never really
Left my mind
But he’s more than what I assume.
His flaws are common for his youth.
He tells no lies.
He hides no truth.
And that is all I ask for.

My grandfather's face is heavy with worry.
He sits on the piano bench in a room empty of sound.
Just breaths.
Breaths of me holding mine
Breaths of him releasing sighs
Breaths of my sister sleeping peacefully on the living room floor.

Heavy with worry,
He reminds me that times are hard snd people are dying. He can't take another phone call.
I watch him try to find answers in the carpet because my face reminds him of youth and possibility that is running out from so many.

Blues melodies are echoing in the kitchen,
Shrieks from an over eager two year old can be heard up stairs.
I have no answers, just prayer and love.
Grandpa don't worry.

Don't go falling for these Cali boys. They're undeniable, selling dreams with kisses on top. Views of the boulevards and sights of the sun. You might just find him and fall all at once.

Dear you,

Some people are complicated inside. They take work to be understood, like it takes work to master the courts, work to get through tough times, work to find love when you think the meaning itself has no purpose anymore. I'm here to remind you it does.

Someone once said when you need love, look to yourself and find what  you're looking for in you. Personally, I never understood how someone could find hugs, kisses, understanding, and comfort within themselves. I guess it wasn't until I'd been knocked down a few times that I started to get the point. Sometimes you are all you need.

See, that sounds weird, maybe even lonely, but when you look inside yourself, what do you see?
What are you made of? Who made you? Who got you to this point? That's where the love within you is. Find her smile.

She'll see you through.

whats wrong love? you look like you've lost your best friend...*

one of those endings that hurt because it wasn't suppose to go that way

same song different note

except

He's rare.

Stuck like your smell to my skin that reminds me of where I've been and always want to be.

I fell in love with him the way you fall asleep: slowly at first, then all at once.

How did it get harder now that you're so close?
Geographically.
As in we share a zip code.

Missing you being far away just so I could imagine the great many ways life would go once we were reunited.
Sharing phone lines feeling more in sync than ever, even when connection failed us *Poor Connection, call will resume shortly

Then you'd reappear, sometimes a tad delayed and blurry,
but there.

*what's wrong love? you look like you've lost your best friend…

Dear old me

I'll do this for you. You remind me of how far we've come...together. I fought for us to get here and I will carry us on my back to make sure next year the new me will continue the legacy of progression.

I don't judge you, you taught me so much about what I didn't want to be that right now I feel overwhelmed with blessings to be standing here happy with how we've managed to keep it all together.

Can you believe we've been at this for 20 years now? Scares the **** out of me too. But we've done pretty good for ourselves old me. I can't wait to see what we'll continue to do.

Yearning for a heartbeat
Begging for a breath
Dreaming of a blinking eye
Having
Affairs
With
Funerals
While I had weddings, and births waiting for me
Back home.
Having *** with the dark
When sunlight waits for me to return to
Make love with her.
Kissing knives when I could be caressing rose petals.
Walking with my mistress
Barefoot in a cemetery
Because my wife never ventures
To that part of town
Life, my love. Death, my mistress
My life is my love
But death intrigues me.
Death needs me.
Death desires me
But my life
She loves me
She dreams of me,
She vowed to always be here
A promise
She is incapable of keeping
Death has caught up to me
She whispers
That she can take the pain away
Take away my regrets
Take away my stress
She promises me a future of fun
But I tell her
“Death, you should never promise me future”
I leave death
Until she calls my name
For the last time
I venture

So basically the secret fear that I've been harboring and is preventing me from being completely positive is the idea that I'll never love someone as much as I love/loved you. While you're living in happiness and love, I'll still be looking comparing each one to you. I'll question myself should I give in and confess all my built up nerves, thoughts, and frustrations hoping you'll give me something that will guide me in the right direction. But I answer my questions with "it'll never happen. let it go. how much rejection will you take?" I don't know. I'm teetering between oblivion and rejection scared of what you'll think of me. And I cushion my potential fails with excuses such as "I just want to be friends" or "I just miss your conversation" to hide my love. I just wanna know what really happened and if I even matter. I know I don't not nearly as much as I used to. I wonder if you even think of me. Speak now or forever hold your peace they said. I'm afraid to speak because I fear a response that won't lead me to peace..

I fell in love based on a lie. I never had to face the fact that in the end, when the ashes settled, the clouds cleared, the birds flew back north, that you wouldn't be with me. Yes you're here, but still based on a lie. When pushed against the wall, you took the easy way out. Leaving me here. My love hasn't changed. I meant every word. And I'd like to think if I was faced with the same issue maybe my love would give me the bravery to tell the whole truth. We lie to keep from hurting the ones we love. And you never really lied to me.

God presents each detail for a reason. I never question that, but I question how this will be when the lonliness fills, the hearts mend, the tears dry. But it's my loneliness, my heart, my tears. The only fear of mine is that I will regret the love I gave.

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

I can argue with you more than anyone because somehow you'll show me that I'm lovable beyond my means.
Even in our mess of confusion, we make sense. Not always, but we make do.

Always proving me right. I won't mind him though because soon enough he'll see how ****** up one can feel watching them pay more mind to someone else. I didn't interrupt him, I didn't throw one ounce of shade. i danced, I laughed, i continued my night as if he never had showed up. As if I didn't see him in my peripheral vision whispering in her ear, dancing pelvis to pelvis. nah. It wasn't worth me breaking a sweat because I know I don't want that much. I may not even want him at all. So it doesn't bother me because on the off chance that I maybe would want him, he would be ******* it up each day. Taking advantage of being cared about. It's obnoxious. I throw in the towel easily, and his cockiness does not attract me. It's amazing how someone can look so different in a matter of weeks, and now I'm not really sure what I'm seeing, but I know I'll forget about him once I've left. maybe then he'll be able to see.

So many poems you've inspired.
The best part of me.
Words taken for granted
Although I loved and wrote them willingly.
I always knew.

Full of life
I can't squeeze a word in most times
He can't hear my voice
He's drowning in himself

They'll knock your love down
And try to smear it out.
Ignore its prescence and neglect the joy it gives you
They'll always remember when you were down and out
Never curious if love ever pulled you back up
Your love will be mocked and forgotten and taken lightly

Luckily my love is mine and only needs to be understood by me.

I don't remember anything.
A blur of friends and drinks
Dances and laughs
You fell in the mix, but I don't remember
I just woke up smelling like you.

I made this promise to myself that 20 would be the year of me.
Self love, self worth, self focus.
That in this year I would reflect on what truly is my purpose on this earth and how I can live out that purpose.
I promised I'd detach myself from anything that brought me pain in my teen years closing doors that I too long always kept partially cracked hoping something or someone would love me enough to eventually slip back through.

I swore I'd asexualize myself and turn off any urge to love someone with all of me..
That may sound unhealthy, but I reached a point where it's so exhausting I have to rebuild the strength back up to let someone new in.

I thought this day was a test to show how much love was out there for me, and I received so much love.
I had this expectation that that love would be shown by the one person I needed it most from.
I was mistaken.

I swore I'd let it go if today wasn't what I needed.
It wasn't.
Just as nineteen is gone, he is too.

Happy birthday to me.

I'll write you letters that smell of new beginnings and fear hoping to receive letters of comfort and strength. I'll love you from places you may never get to see, and you'll remind me of all that is waiting for me back home. It will be so hard, but what's a rock to a mountain?

I pray that in my year of 20 I am slow to love.
Bitter it may sound, but really...
Those moments of euphoria are so deceiving

I vow to stop looking. He'll come when he is ready. Until then I will work on me. Being someone that I can love before I expect someone to do the same.

I want a break.
Just a day spent in silence, away from the world.
No one, not even myself.
I wish I could just isolate my mind from my body for just a day.
No one I'm forced to interact with, no one to give a fake emotion to.
For just a **** day I want someone to care about me. To see past the walls I build to meet their needs, and see I'm unhappy too. We're all unhappy.
I'm sick of being a friend.
I want to play the victim for a change.
I don't give a **** about your problems, I have my own. But I take the time to make your problems mine to help you through.
Why can't I just be my own everything?
No one can care about me the way I do, or see when something is actually wrong. But how could they? I always seem so strong. Everyday is a different suicide note that I'm too cowardly to sign.
But lord knows I'm tired of hurting, stressing, settling.
Just tell me why my hurt matters the least when I work the hardest, give the most.
If this is what all of life is like, just drop me off here.
I'm dying in a self preservation society.
There's no one left to care about me, not even me.

Crave me when the world is repulsed by all I have to give.
Show warmth as the flurries dance on my eyelashes and my breath becomes visible.
Remember there is only one of me,
And all of me wants all of you.

He sings me love songs
Even though he can't sing at all
Because he knows it'll make me smile
As he tries to hit that note
Stroking my cheek
As I hold back laughter
Humming the tune as he leans in
Looking me in my eyes
Tilting my chin up
To kiss me at the best part
And get so caught up in kisses
He just lets the song play out without him

Happy Valentines Day

I see lonely hearts and falling leaves.

Falling, but I am not a leaf.

Where do those hearts go?

Trying to find a place for my heart, she needs a home.

Maybe she's best with me.

But she wants to be loved, she wants to be loved*

She's best to be loved by me.

Call me crazy, setting myself up for a
Failure
But, I told him about you today
Better safe than sorry
Because I don't want him to interfere
He always was the extreme type
The guy that forever remains in the dark
Until that night when he texts you while your boyfriend is holding your phone
Or face times you at 3am and keeps calling because you normally answer
He even calls sometimes when you ignore just because its obvious your not sleeping
So yes
I warned him

"You have a boyfriend?"
"No, but I met someone"

Far fetched but
I've felt more for him these past 3 weeks
then i've felt for this man i've known for years
Because he has promise,
It's not purposeless

Not a way of making him jealous
But proving that someone out there
knows i'm worth something besides
sometime loving

Ever had a moment where you forget where you're sleeping?
So lost in your dream that you forget the bed that you're in is not your own?
For a few hours you don't feel them embracing you or the awkwardness that is waking up not knowing what to do next.

I forgot where I was. Didn't feel him. I rolled over and saw his image and remembered maybe this is where I needed to be all along. I didn't have the impulse to flee. I just watched him sleep.

He rolled over and saw my bright eyes smiling. He pulled me in closer, kissed my face as he greeted "buenos dias". An hour before my alarm clock so we had just enough time.
Loving you is too easy. It overwhelms me sometimes.

Long overdue, you probably think I forgot about you all this time. Maybe I forgot how 2pac's Makavelli album was blasting while mama cooked dinner or your smile whenever you cracked a joke. Well I haven't, we haven't. Your room is just as you left it, and in my heart, in my mind, I'm still and always will be your little sister because no friend can fill the void of a big brother. No child can fill the void of a first born, and no man can fill the void of a mother's son. I'll need you for advice, I'll need you for guidance, I need you to be here. We need our smile, our sunshine, our laughter, our prince. So we find it in our hearts each morning to wake up and thank god we're a day closer to your coming home because home isn't home without you.

It is not without great vanity that a man loves a woman. She sits hours upon days, sunsets upon moons, waiting to be missed. He is inconsistent with his efforts, and as her love swells, he retreats back to the mannerisms that exemplify why women want what they can never have. He looks in the mirror feeling so lucky to live in his skin, so lucky to be so loved, while she looks in the mirror wondering what it is about her that does not intrigue him enough to fully commit to a heart as fully committed as her own. He knows his power, he wears it well.
It is with great vanity a man is loved.

keep me

i don't wanna go back out there.
just to be cold and alone.
just as i am here.
might as well suffer with you.
be alone next to you
even if i know someone else was here
will be here
is here.
this spot isn't mine.
neither are you.

but don't send me back out there.
although i'll be cold and alone
with or without you.

Submissiveness:
       give into man. silence yourself. his word is final. rush to his beck and call when he is angered. we are wrong. man is dominant, and woman is soft. if man is the bone, we are the gushy cartilage cushioning his fall. body dominated and composed of bone, but we are the organs that keep the body functioning. forever being transplanted, while our men are broken. submit.

Purity:
       save yourself for man. wait for him with all your white so you are not tainted. innocence upheld. it is all for him, only him. wait for him to take it all, whenever he desires. be pure.

Domesticity:
        the home calls our name. it is our calling. our knees bound to scrubbing, hands tied to kneading because our family needs us. we are to be the slaves of our homes just as we were to the white man. permanency of pressing collars that are not our own. domestic labor.

Piety:
        we come from the rib of adam. without the presence of man we, ourselves would not exist. for this reason, we worship. we worship to reiterate our purity, to maintain our sanity when others challenge our virtues of womanhood. the lord is our shepherd. we uphold our lord. besides our husbands, he is all that we shall want.

womanhood.

worth me walking at 11:30 at night to be with you come midnight just to be the first to tell you happy birthday.

worth the throbbing I feel between my legs when you hold me, pressing yourself against me so I can't think of anything else but this throbbing.

worth early mornings spent watching you sleep. Feeling you feel my back dimples, as if your hands are fully conscious even during your slumber. Pulling me in closer until our legs are completely intertwined and I have no choice but to give in to you.

You're worth me giving in to you.

I'm writing you a physical love letter
Sealing it with the sweetest kiss.
I'm writing you nonstop with sweaty palms
Hoping my words bring you the sexiest pleasure
Writing, writing, writing
Pressing my pen to the paper
Laying your heart between my lines
Letting out a frustration
Creating a cursive you can cling to
love and lust mix on the paper
writing you signing my name as forever.

Hopefully one day you'll listen to you & i by john legend and think of me the way i always think of you.


*out of all of the girls, you're my one and only girl. ain't nobody in the world tonight...you don't have to try.

When those soons turn into forevers and the days seem to drag along because you know someone is missing. You're just waiting for him to come home.

So we left his room the same your honor because we didn't know how long he'd rip the streets because he always came home. He loved us. He laughed at us, we laughed with him. He was my mom's first born, and they had a special bond you see. A bond that showed me that my mother can love through anything.

Believe it or not it was the first time I saw her sad. You just felt her mood dampen when she came to my room and said they gave your brother 12 years today, and closed the door without offering another detail. And I cried in my lonesome. We all did because he had already been gone 6 months and now I was being told the next time he'd be free I'd have a college degree, a whole new life, I'd know things that I didn't know because he was gone when I was only thirteen.

Your honor I don't know why he did it. He was the first born. The first grand baby, the first favorite. I admit I was jealous at his everyone always had a soft spot for him, but then he'd ask me to do something and I'd do it because I loved him. He was my brother, and not a day went by that he didn't remind me how annoying it can be to be the youngest. But your honor we gave him all we could collectively. I don't know why it wasn't enough. You sentenced our family to 12 years, but you let murderers run free. You took my brother. He never saw me off to prom, never met my first boyfriend, never saw me graduate. He never told me how to be a woman because I was only 13 when you took him from me.