I said I'd love you forever
and you came back 5 years later
begging me to prove it.
You were adamant that I recall every detail,
as I'd promised.
You asked your favorite color,
if I remembered the way you'd kiss me
one lip at a time.
I reached into the back of my mind,
to the room where I'd kept you
and all your idiosyncrasies
separate from the sun.
I braced myself for the slow burn
that would travel inevitably
through my hand from the doorknob.
Nothing came.
I pushed through the door
to your windowless room,
and found nothing but the dust that you deserved.

I said I'd love you forever.
I'm sorry,
I didn't realize I was lying.

I’m doing so well.
I offered you to Charybdis in exchange for my sanity.
Scylla too, at first, but she seemed too great an evil and I’m over it, I promise.
I’d rather watch you disappear into the maelstrom of my memory than
have to pick six pieces of your body from the crags in my head.

I’m doing so well.
I warned you of the Lotus Eaters
and took ten deep breaths when you peeked inside the bag of winds and blew our love astray.
I told a blind Polyphemus you were sorry for his loss.
He said Nobody is sorry, and I knew that he was right.

I’m doing so well.
I amble through Phoenicia on sidewalks that remember all the stories you told.
I bump into Nausikaa. She asks if I am Circe, and I tell her my name.
She drops her gaze to the pavement before admitting that you never mentioned me.

I’m doing so well.
I don’t spite the olives that dare to grow without our bodies entwined beneath them.
And I don’t mind when Antinous calls me ahead, begging me to finish our shroud - to leave the loom,
and us, behind.

I’m doing so well.
I buried all my anger in Kalypso’s wet sand
And as it followed you out to sea with the tide she came up and commiserated;
You left her once, too.

When I hear the word
Nostalgia;
I think of the trampoline
and how we weren't allowed
to put the sprinkler underneath
it; when anyone was home.
A ******* lab who knew
love
but never manners
and who never
wanted to learn,
especially not from us.
We laughed louder than we cried,
and he must have thought
those kids are doing
something
everything
nothing
right.
Watching my
big brother
land his first and
only kickflip while
discovering dew-wet worlds
in the bamboo shoots
that grew
inexplicably
in our Connecticut backyard.
Eating crab apples,
and never getting
too sick to want
another one.
Sitting in circle time
not knowing
that we were
the only
black kids
but knowing that
our parents loved us enough
to teach us themselves.
Walking outside on
the first day of spring,
and baking on the pavement like
fresh brown bread.
Days that started with
waffles and too much Aunt Jemima,
and ended, invariably,
with Sleepy Time Tea.

We love in a moment
and we marvel at our efficiency,
stretching seconds into years.
The sheer longevity,
the way time whispers her secrets
so that only skin can hear.
In years, I imagine,
I will stand under tepid water
and feel your absence
on the expanse of my rib cage.
Dipping softly into the well
of the sound of your voice before
drowning in it's silence.

In seconds (years), I'll resurface (recover).

Most nights
I want someone
whose hands will find a niche
in the hollows of my silhouette
where my hips kiss my ribs
hello and goodbye
and whose head will rest between *******
that he bared only hours before.

Most nights
I want to wake and say
"Hello, duvet - "
to the dizzy dark haired
man of my dreams.

But tonight,
I will sleep alone -
and not feel it.

Here is my soul, and here she will stay.
She clings to my ribs at the end of each day

She's fragile and small, she refuses to grow.
I'd ask her to leave, but she has nowhere to go.

She's the rush of my blood, the flush from inside
She has nothing to fear, and nothing to hide.

She loves the rain, and the wind from the west
She loved you too before you left.

She speaks to me when I'm alone.
If my body's a castle, she sits on the throne.

She taught me laughter, love, and light.
She never sleeps, although I might.

Sometimes I hate her, she's never wrong.
But I can't stay away for long.

I loved you once, I've loved him thrice,
but it's she who grips me like a vice.

And though I give my heart away,
here is my soul, and here she will stay.

you, are a new you.
and i want to fall asleep when you sleep
and only ever wake
to the sound of your gaze
as it drinks me in like water
and the touch of your wonder,
as it covers me with
the gossamer whisper
of lips grazing skin.

I sleep with 12
pillows; I'm afraid
of the dark.

You anchor me to the rest of my life.
Despite despotic fear,
standing on the quivering edge of being alone -
holding my hand and catching our reflections
on the dark stormy waters of the things we do not know.

You are my dream catcher,
and I promise I will keep yours safe and sound
for whenever you need to be reminded
of why it hurts so badly in the first place.

I planted kisses on your back
and watched you grow into my home.
I drew my flag on your chest
with steady fingers.
But I lost too many battles of our silly civil war
and kept a vapid, trembling score.
I conquered your valleys
but could not climb our hills.

I traversed other mountains,
and let cold winters make me numb.
I flew to bright blue oceans,
drank from the fountains of nature
and its inhabitants.
I tried to leave myself behind
in topography that I could never learn to love.
I determined my home to be whatever I chose.

But I would trade my Sahara
and every aboriginal
because no other country
grows wild with my kiss.

She said, "Imperfection is beauty"
from the cover of *******,
to the girls whose husbands read it
behind their powder smooth backs.
And we tried to believe that
for as long as we could
till she choked on the office
that took her imperfection to bed.

In this garden of Eden
against the back of the church
I am the snake to his naivete.

Her eyes fluttered open after her legs
(hummingbirds and the parting of petals)
and the first thing she felt
was the way he filled her like a mold.
"I need you so much." He said
(have you ever been a craving?)
And her sigh was an acquiesce
To his acquisition of her body
Like a plot of land that he would plow
trusting him to let her bloom
(like sparrows and chariots)
Giving him time to sew (seeds)
himself back into place.

I would go
to someone else.
For help, and advice -
I would claim another bulwark,
hiding in its shadow.
(His banner over me is)
But when I fell in love
with you,
I fell hopelessly out of love
with everyone else.

Did you barter for your cow-eyes?
Trade a lock of hair - or David's lyre?
For the right to the king,
The golden apple. Taking a bite of (lust.)
the knowledge of good, evil, and discord.
Looking into the eye of the LORD
(saying mine, all mine.)
For a soak in full view- seems a glimpse was all it took (but you took it all).
Bathsheba - mastering Venus, flouting Juno-
Did you barter for your white arms?

You wrote your name on my
white sand beach,
my ****** page -
eight by eleven
stranger to the (press) -
in a white wax crayon.

There are times when I forget you're there
(in white on my white page)
and the pads of my fingertips
flit across its surface
until they
skid, stunting, across your signature.

(But it gets worse)
because I'm surrounded by brilliant colors -
blue violets, crimson fields
but when I dip my (proverbial) brush
and attempt to stain my
****** white page -
the color seeps around your seal,
but never over (it's never over).

They highlight your stifling presence
on my page
with how inherently not you they are.
And I wish I could scratch you out
(without) ripping my white, now crimson,
page.

Everyone else is the water color to your crayola.

Losing you was never the plan.
But neither was the whimpering
night that spilt from your mouth
into the cavity of my wistful ear.
Lies of omission, I love you without the but
But it was there, cold beneath the velvet, lying in wait till the second I fell the hardest.
*No more flying carpets, darling.
You're going to hit the ground.

Let’s take a nap

in the sun

in the spring.

But no rain, just a bow in my hair,

and a smile behind closed lids,

as your body outlines mine.

I don’t know what love is, but I feel it
anyway.
In every shutter of my eyelashes,
Each time my thumb brushes my lip
Running my fingers through my own hair.
Subconsciously willing him to appear.
It makes me feel beautiful.
It makes everything beautiful.

They said it was the ocean -
when you cupped the pink shell to your infant ear and they (lied)
in order to show you the beauty
that sifts through the world like flour.
But the truth is the beauty.
The journey of your blood,
the sound of your self -
pumping, rushing -
They'll still say its the ocean when you use your own (hand).

I watched a leaf fall from a floating place in time
landing on the wet ground with the rest of the refuse.
She took the money and ran
(or did you expect her morality to beat her poverty into
a docile submission)
I watched the clouds block the burning moon,
cementing night into the earth and
taking the light all for themselves.
(born on the street but playing in the gutter
with the rest of the rich, sparkling rats)

If I was in love,
with being loved,
breaths that covet the tang of your own
standing in stadiums, feeling alone
(waxing poetic, Sappho for the straight girl)
I would not love you, appositive.
For I do not miss hearing,
(I was always too close for believing)
but the rhythmic lap of my own words
(I love you, appositive)
Effortless, slipping from my heart
like a hollow ship on an airy sea
to Ithaka (you) from Ilion (me).

When he says "Hello."
And my computer let's me know
that he's yet to forget who I am
although
he has forgotten that I loved him -

I feel nothing.

My love for you is not the kind in movies.

I have no chronic hurt when you are away

there is no ebbing at injustices, no silent blazing flame in my spirit.

I am marked with no letter, you are not inked to my heart.

But i wish you the moon on the blackest of nights

I wish you the sun on the coldest of days

and I wish you thoughts of me when you feel you are alone.