All around me were revolving doors, thousands of them, but somehow, she found me. Or maybe I found her. Fire ravaged my soul like indigenous lands but still I trusted god, put my knees in the dirt and asked for a love so strong it could soothe a blaze, stop a war.

I needed love to bathe me in a crepuscular light then send me
giddily running to the moon. I needed a love that had my nose
and eyes and lips. I stood in pools of tears seeing migrant
children be reunited with their parents, cameras cocked and aimed like guns ready to capture the crime scene they created. Colored bodies filled prisons and the earth. They needed love too.

Thank the baby blue heavens for her. She appeared one February amid a terrible time, casually strolled over to me like death to disease-ridden soldiers. The water in the air sparred with the crispness of a fading winter, a doldrum that could only be killed by springtime beauty clashed with my Capricorn/I-can’t-help-that-I-need-to-feel-productiveness, a tyrant fighting any faint sign, plan, idea, microscopic bacteria of progress.

We’ve both cut ourselves open and tasted our own blood. Brown eyes sunken from seeing/feeling/being too much. But this love could be salvation. With every kiss planted and every crevice found, I feel seen. With her, my body is not theirs, not a battleground but sacred land. When she takes me into her mouth like holy communion, I know she’s worth the sacrifice.

We lie together, dark-skinned limbs so intertwined, respiratory systems so in sync we could be one. They demonize us the same anyways. I hear sirens and protests but it’s soft, like hushed turbulence. The sound of her heart beating as fast as mine was louder. Our hands clasped like we were still praying for each other, for the world.