Harry bends over the grill,
beefy with years of drink
and culled anger,
scrubbing until silver shines,
a bullet waiting for my shift.

He believes if the French Toast is perfect,
she will appear in a halo of steam,
peacoat and Mary Janes,
ready to forgive the life they never had.

Outside Brother Juniper’s,
Peachtree Street is a kingdom
of late century's lost:
druggies, rent boys, drag queens,
pimps preaching Jesus
to the homeless in Piedmont Park.
The smell of grease stitches it all together.

Inside, fluorescent light
makes faces soft as wet clay,
ready to be remade by morning.
French fries sizzle like whips,
blintzes bleed cherry onto chipped plates,

and Tati, round as a blessing,
delivers soup to the sobbing girl
whose mascara becomes a confession.

I clock in,
busting knuckles and boots,
young, stupid,
just trying to keep up with him.
I know he wants her to return.
I know she won’t.
I know he’s getting older.

I watch Harry’s grace and sweat,
watching the city believe
in one last plate of salvation.

At dawn,
he’ll stumble across the street,
feed the jukebox Ray Charles,
and search the sidewalks
for her red hair in every stranger.

You enter like riddles, all smirk and suggestion,
Unpacking your chaos in well-folded grace.
I pose like a thinker, then fail each confession,
Your presence turns logic to vapor and lace.
No lock ever halts your emotional session,
Just doors left ajar in a self-haunted space
You decorate silence with longing transitions
And find comfort you yearn for in wild heart embrace.

No permits are asked. You just climb and begin,
A vandal of stillness with restless intent.
Each heartbeat becomes your new patch to win,
Your lines bleed through dreams that were never well-meant.
I once thought of solitude as discipline
Now even my doubts wear your pigment and scent.
Tell me, what canvas survives content?

I tried to erase you with breath and revision,
But ink has a way of not asking to stay.
It leans into cracks, takes its own bold position,
Then whispers its name in a sunlight decay.
This isn’t romance—it’s quiet derision,
A mural of “maybe” in permanent grey
I flinch when you line my pallete and color disarray.

Your words write themselves in fluorescent distortion,
With arrows that point where I never have been.
You map out escape like a form of extortion,
Then grin while you scribble the exits back in.
I measure the cost in small acts of contortion,
In sleeping with memories dressed in my skin
Do you ever lose sweet rage condition.,
Or every conversation make you eager to win?

What makes you return with your metaphor army?
Each phrase is a soldier that conquers the night.
You charm like a riddle then turn into “harm me,”
Each vowel a grenade, each promise a slight.
You’ve ruined restraint with your soft origami
I fold into shapes that forgo what is right
And still, I await your next moments rewrite.

So here in this gallery hung in my chest,
You tag what you want, then move on unscathed.
But each mark you leave has outlived every guest,
And none of them asked to be saved.
I smile for the critics, I nod with the rest
But secretly wonder what’s left unengraved
And whether I’m built to live or be repaved.

Housing urban development is a federal housing law
Not an affordable derivatives market

That's reliant people monies.

John Lewis is a foundation of tenant laws

His hands reach me here in my congresswoman's office now and again
Those is mighty dreamy slippers to fall into
But those aren't your writes yet

I am a former section 8 voucher recipient

we play two rounds of pool.
he beats me twice.
now the air between us
is nothing but teeth and heat—
and in my head
he’s already got me
on the table,
thirsty for every part of me.

he grins, asks
exactly what i’m thinking,
and god,
he’s right—
it is too fast.
a week in,
we’re breathing
nothing but each other.

so i settle into his lap
just to rest my head,
to counteract—
this.
us.

but his mouth
finds mine,
and the world
tilts open.

It hurts
like trying to hug a cloud
that owes you money.
You live in my heart
rent-free,
but my arms?
Evicted.
You are emotionally Airbnb
booked out,
but the photos were misleading.
Pain is elegant.
It wears a tuxedo to breakfast.
It sighs like a French poet
watching their croissant float down the Seine.
And elegance is everywhere
especially in the unseen.
Like your *******.
Yes, those
the hidden diplomats of heartbreak,
curled like sleeping cats
at the bottom of your laundry basket,
smelling faintly of rebellion and lavender-scented denial.
Keep them fresh.
Not for me
I’ve joined a monastery made of memes
but for the next poor soul
who mistakes your playlist for a spirit.
Let him be dazzled.
Let him be devoured.
Let him know, too late,
that lace is a trapdoor.