One.
I used to write about my ex a lot. *** so hot I was surprised when our lust ran out of steam.
Then you came, *** could not compare to the explosives of two fire signs detonating, but it was good enough to warm me up, to work up a sweat, to quench my thirst, make me think maybe not the best but **** I’ve had worse. Interestingly the compatibility and probability of a Capricorn man and Leo woman working was extremely low but I was determined to make this work if anything just as a big ******* to astrology. Always the pyromaniac, I was relieved and excited to feel flames again. To feel those sparks to get my ink pen flowing hot lava across the page, but why does it have to derive from pain? My love, I was happy to love you. Oblige you.
Keep you. Bask you in the depths of my love and hoped you came out clean. Every time I love,
I love a little deeper, a little bit more womanly, a little bit more openly, flowing - my love I did not mean to drown you. I should have let you.

Two.
April 28th. I wasn’t going to go on that first date with you. It was personally too late into the night for my liking but it fit into your schedule perfectly. I should have taken this as a sign that I would be doing most of the sacrifices and compromises. You wanted to impress me so you agreed to play pool, a game you would lose and afterwards we sat in your car and had a fire conversation. As you poured a little of yourself onto me, I could not help but notice the street lights illuminate your brown sugar face and the stars ***** dance at the vibrations of your laughter. The night was chilly but in the car our dialogue kept me warm and cozy. For a date that I wasn’t about to show up for, I didn’t want to leave. I just wanted to commemorate the anniversary of our first date with you. To celebrate the love that you said singed for me, for it to be a testament that we made it through this year barely unscathed. Most of the scars were mine.

Three.
The Bluetooth speaker that you got me for my birthday.The yellow and black checkered Vans that I wore to the Eagles and Steelers preseason game, though I have deleted the pictures with you off of Instagram. It was during that game when you got mad at me for jokingly agreeing with the girl sitting beside you that the Steelers rookie QB was hot, that I saw the honeymoon phase smear right off of your face. Who you pretended to be and who I tried to compromise myself to become began to smolder underneath the heat of the August sun, our incompatibilities started to ring volumes; we didn’t have *** enough, we argued too much and it never resulted with our clothes off and our bodies touching, just me driving home angrily and sleeping alone, this camp fire blazed brightly and blew out quickly. Every time we tried to reignite it, it would blow out just as fast, frustratingly, it is my fault for ignoring such a weak connection.

Four.
The iPad that you got me for Christmas. After you opened up the gifts that I bought you, real round and heavy tears ran down your face and caressed my shoulder. We embraced so tightly, so lovingly, it was the most intimate and honest moment we shared. In that moment I knew that you never was really loved, really cared for by many women so I was determined to be that woman for you. I was so dead set on not breaking your heart like your ex girlfriend that I paid no regard to what was happening to mine. Over time, I could empathize why your ex girlfriend cheated on you. She decided on the things that she wasn’t going to let you take, she knew when to let that go, when to release if it was only for a quick relief, a guilty reprieve, so yeah maybe it’s you and has always been you.


Five.
The Nintendo Switch that you got me for Valentines Day. Maybe I can give it back if that was supposed to be some type of foreshadowing for how you would switch up on me, the painting with a twist painting turned facing the corner in my bedroom and I’m not sure why I haven’t thrown it out yet. It pains me to admit but sometimes I was wrong but I tried so hard to do everything right from the bottom of my heart. The South Park shirt that I took one morning from your apartment, it no longer smells like the cologne I gifted to you after being washed too many times. Every so often I’ll pull it from my drawer, a gentle reminder that we had some good moments, that we let our love kindle like incense and let the aroma fill the room, but those good times just could not outweigh the bad.

Six.  
The first time that I admitted that I loved you was after you texted me on a Monday morning that you didn’t think we were meant to be, and I knew that because remember we didn’t have *** enough, we argued too much, but for some reason we both refused to stop wasting matches to relight this love that we knew was going to fan out eventually. Call that insanity or pyromania and **** aren’t Mondays insufferable enough? Haven’t I suffered through enough?
That first time those words escaped my mouth, it was like extinguishing a living room already ravaged by flames and all that you have enough time to grab is the dog and your favorite photo, and I meant it genuinely I loved you for the broken man that you was and for the man you had potential to be but just not for me. It was putting ointment on an obvious gaping wound. It healed nothing, just prolonged the suffering.

Seven.  
Eventually I reached my boiling point, reached the point when I needed to let this dimly lit blaze fizzle out. I know that love isn’t always easy but it didn’t have to be this difficult or unhealthy. Not to exaggerate but I cried for three days straight. I had to mourn you and my fantasies, release your toxins and my own from my body, consume harsh realities and bitter truths, face the ways you triggered me, ask myself the seething question of if I knew I was the bomb, why wasn’t I being treated like it? Why didn’t I subconsciously think that I deserved better than you gave me and what I allowed and accepted? The last time, that lust masquerading as love, I let that wildfire destroy everything in its wake, including me. Even though I was dosed in disappointment and heart ache, I was determined to not let this time be like the past. This body, this heart, and this spirit is not a toxic landfill, or a burial ground, or Ground Zero. I am always a Phoenix rising anew, always the Leo shining, always a firefly. One day I woke up and realized it didn’t hurt as much, my heart still beat and pumped out red and orange currents of ferocious love.

Eight.
My biggest regret was holding on to this for far too long. Letting go took strength that I didn’t know I had, this fiasco taught me so much about myself and about love. I am (too) patient, compassionate, understanding and I am sometimes wrong but I always try to do everything with love. But I am not and will not be anyone’s emotional punching bag just so I can brag that I have a man who buys me gifts or to say that I have a boo for the holidays. Society has conditioned black women to think that we have to suffer in order to be deserving of love, that if you can’t stand the heat then you should stay out of those same kitchens where our black mothers used to drag a chair close to the stove, press that hot comb to our ***** curls, mad that we’re sweating halfway before she’s finished, wincing because she’s burned us but she’ll say that’s just the grease, so yeah maybe us black girls have had our attitudes brewing and been predisposed to the flames but we will not accept your torturing.

Nine.
If you would’ve asked me then what was the color of love, I would’ve said it was you and your cherry water ice colored lips leaving stains on the collars of my shirts that I have yet to wash, it’s us in our Sunday’s best as we went to your church and I prayed with you and for you. It’s the Polo shirt still neatly folded in the brown paper bag hanging on my closet door, I never got the opportunity to give it to you and now I have no idea if I should give it away, return it, or save it for the next man who my heart burns intensely for. It’s that flutter my heart felt once your name came across my screen; the second to last text you sent said that you felt our vibe was off and you have never been more right, I was so over wasting energy trying feed that spark. The last text that you sent you said that you suppose you missed me, and I mean duh of course you would, of course you should. I used to write about my ex a lot, have *** so hot, confuse love with everything it wasn’t, chase men who reminded me of my father until I was scorned and scarred. Now I get to write about you too, and I just needed new material, something to get me charged up, something to get hot ink scalding across the page until I felt the heat on my fingers and the paper disintegrates to ash. But make no mistake, this poem is not all about pain.

Ten.
If you ask me now what is the color of love, I’d say it’s the shine of my peace of mine. It’s the smile I have worn everyday since I actively decided to choose me and my happiness, and not a single tear has fallen over you since, no second guessing, no having my feelings invalidated, no gaslighting, no heat damage pressed on these black curls, I have let them grow out unruly and free, I have never experienced bliss like this after a breakup before. It’s the flash of my mom’s camera as she captures me walking down the aisle during my graduation, I was so proud to be there after several nervous breakdowns and telling myself I was going to quit at least five times. It’s my toes dipped in the warm waters in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, the sun glistening off my smooth chocolate skin that has taken me so many years to be proud to live in, it’s my wounds some old and some new on proud display, learning to leave my Neosporin at home, but I am here and healing and laughing and learning to loving myself better as I haven’t let depression eat alive. If you ask me now what is the color of love, I will tell you that it is me. It has always been me.

This is the third October.
I still get depressed, eyes well with tears
that fall when no one is looking, still drink
until I forget I’m crying, stumble to my bed
alone and hope I can sleep peacefully. I wake up, flinch
at my reflection in the mirror, caress my still
flat stomach that hasn’t been filled since, people
will ask “how are you?” And I think still empty, the
numbers still haven’t managed to fade, they ****
the life out of a room, out of my womb, if you look
close enough you can still see that Saturday on my face
and where I couldn’t get all of the blood up from. I estimated
that my due date would’ve been October 13th. Only 5% of
women actually give birth on the day they are expected to. What
a tragedy that we’ll never get to know.

3 or 5 or 3-5% of rapes result in pregnancy.
I became one of the 32,000 annual **** related pregnancies
in January 2016. I wouldn’t be surprised if those numbers were
higher, I debate whether or not I should be grateful that I have
no real recollection of how I became a part of that statistic, this body still
keeps secrets from me, this body is part crime scene but no evidence remains,
part cemetery with an unmarked grave that I always bring my grief to, that I always
bring my condolences and my deepest and sincerest apologies to, there’s a part of
this body still hollow, buried six feet deep, in purgatory, still damaged, still strapped
to those stirrups, eyes staring out at the strawberry colored walls, invaded for the
second time in two months, ruined by prying hands, still drunkenly murmuring no
until the room collapses pitch black and I remember why I’ve always hated the dark
and why I never wanted to be alone with him again, this body is still trying to cling onto
what your existence would’ve looked like. What a tragedy that we’ll never get to know.

I deserved a better conception story, wish I had chosen a different
way this concluded or continued, we deserved to quell my doubts and fears
about whether or not I would be and have everything that I do now
that I didn’t back then regardless, just with you here, what a tragedy that
we’ll never get to know. You deserved the most of all, to have had life
breathe into your lungs, your tiny precious body placed on my skin, a name,
I hoped that you would’ve been a boy that I would’ve named Phoenix. You
was conceived on the darkest day of my life, you arose in my body for the first time
mid February in the form of vicious nausea and 7 AM gas station hotdogs,
and a severe dislike for pizza, you was making your presence known, a presence
that I have been dying to feel ever since. We deserved more days with each other,
a great day with balloons, presents, and cake, I would turn to you smiling and
say I love you more than anything in this world no matter how you got here,
happy birthday baby, now blow out your three candles.

First loves are vital and influential.
They are fresh and ripe in our minds,
always on the tip of our tongues,
they drip from the lips down to the chin,
down to the ground where you hope
it blossoms and blooms something always so beautiful.

First heartbreaks are crucial and powerful.
They are putrid and sour in our mouths,
always on the tip of our fingers, in between your balled up fists,
you’re just anticipating that piece of you to return to you, though it rarely does,
they trickle down to the ground quite devastatingly and deadly
where you hope it doesn’t rot your whole garden.

The leaves can't promise
Autumn that they won't change
or the trees when they'll return by Spring...

When you come back,
please kiss me like the bees do
the roses in the summer,
gently stroke my face
like snowflakes in mid-winter...

Cover me like the raindrops do
in the middle of droughts
that brings the hues of rainbows,
dark skies and dull grey clouds,
and the confused winds that don't know
whether to blow left or right...

I could have sworn I heard
your name brought in by the breeze,
whispered amongst the plants and branches,
passed along to the worms and slugs,
chirped to the birds and fireflies,
landing to the cats and dogs,
and finally, to me, that
this time will be different...

The caterpillar can't promise
Autumn that they won't change
or who they'll be by Spring.



I guess I'll try again next season...

Like footprints paved in
the snow in the driveway coat-
ed by fresh blankets
of white descending snow flakes
in the morning, I know they

are still there. Like the
trees bright with vibrant leaves fall-
en by winter and
flowers kissed by butterflies
replaced with dull grass, I know

they still bloomed there. Like
unexpected, unprotect-
ed surprises grow;
I will never forget the
sensation of cold gel on

my still flat tummy
or the clasp around my pan-
creas, six more weeks
of winter, it rains ******
red. Saturday. Life. Gone but
                                              
                                             I know. I remember.
                                             This was supposed to be a
                                             tanka but I have
                                             never been good at obey-
                                             ing the rules. I have not been
                                             good with losing you.
                                             Intentional, counting syll-
                                             ables, words stuck in
                                             Saturday, I touch my bel-
                                             ly, remembering you exist-
                                                                                         ed here.