Someone’s world jumped
onto a cold set of tracks
at Jamaica station
early last week.

Someone’s world jumped
into the universe next door,
leaving us all for
being too human.

At the time,
I was trapped at Penn Station.
A pain spread
about my stomach
like a pen pressed against
a sheet of looseleaf.

MTA officials made announcements,
calling it a mechanical malfunction.

9 to 5 businessmen in
deep black suits with bluetooth headsets
groaned and bargained
for passage home,
ready to ride
through a stranger's graveyard.

Little kids ran through shops,
fingers sticky with frozen yogurt
and popcorn- surprise treats
used as pacifiers.

I sat in a well known coffee shop
pondering life and death.

The word suicide didn’t hurt
like it used to, but I felt
connected to this stranger.

I thought about
that person’s lover,
that person’s sister,
that person’s mother,
that person’s friend.

I thought about how
all of their galaxies stirred and switched gears.
A planet of theirs- tremendous or trifling in their own imagination-
collapsed and changed the course of everything.
I wondered if their galaxy halted and
each star and planet mourned or
if their galaxy smoothed over the craters
and dodged all the meteors and
didn’t even blink.

My galaxy shifted and
clouds laid thick.
Stars dimmed their lights in harmony.

A few years ago
or even a few months ago,
I would’ve cried
and thought
about following this
stranger to train station heaven.

But now,
I thought about
my sister’s galaxy,
my mother’s galaxy,
my best friend’s galaxy.

Now,
I felt sadness
but I also felt love.

I wonder, when John Hancock
signed the Declaration,
if he could feel time pulling apart
then back together,
taking the shape
of his America.

I wonder, when Lincoln
felt the cold bullet
enter the curls of his hair,
if he had enjoyed the play.

I wonder, when ****’s
burned ownerless toys
and 80-year marriage rings,
if they were shaken
by the screams of thousands.

I wonder, when the sailor
kissed that nurse
when the war had been won,
if he thought about bombs
or her soft lips.

love exists in the crevices of his lips
when they meet mine, fluttering
with promises and words powerful
enough to knock me down effortlessly

it thrives when we're sitting on the couch,
Christmas tree lights like dazzling fragments of heaven
reflecting in his familiar eyes,
and it blossoms when we walk together
in the autumn wind, the sighing
breeze echoing like wildfire in our
ears, whispering both elation
and disbelief

that I am even here right now,
after sixteen years of mystery,
a collection of dust-covered insecurity
now an open book beckoning to be read

yet here we are, and
he holds my hand like a crystal glass
he is afraid to drop, and
I cannot stop thanking him
over and over again,
a fragile metronome of gratitude-
for willing to be brave enough to read
my very first page.

My skin is black.
Probably blacker than
The hole in my soul.
My hair is natural,
And resistant.
Like young black men
Being arrested by white cops.
My favorite color is black,
Probably because no one hardly
ever likes it.
My skin is black,
And I can't change that.