I had a dream that you never deleted any pictures of me
And the one you took of me where the sunbeams were coming out of my hair
While we ate chicken nuggets and drank Dr. Pepper from McDonald's
The one you told me I looked beautiful in
Well
You'd kept it
After all this time

For the sake of discretion, when I retell this story, I am a fish, gill-hooked, near gutted, and thrown back. You are a goose with swan beauty, but not swan grace. There is a girl throwing bread onto the water above my head. Competing for the same crumbs, through what could be a mirror, our mouths met. You took the bread, but I kissed you.

When love grows out of time
And huddles in a grey season
Of distemper, beware chilling
Same, the deep low downing
Doldrums, the browning burn
Of the left alone flower, deftly
Dying laughter, stale motions,
The hollow rings entrapments
When love grows out of time.

all summer in your face
green yes, would suit you, but your brown
unwatered lawn eyes delicious-
a dry wind in a plain
state

your black hair rising
like a tornado on your scalp
a day at a time
marvelous.

you tease me and ****** my weakness
with all of your summer
my day sweats beneath you

my night and your music
commanding my heartbeat
to make adorable
prisons

for a mockingbird.

I'm back in the fast lane,
I didn't want to do it
but I did, furious yet proud

Now all I want is the music, I want the tears,
the face of the drum
is bruising my hands

wanting to see myself hardening
calloused fingers, calloused mind
trying to feel from the inside out
sand myself down and raw and red
writing on the walls, remind myself that I
am black and wrinkled up inside,
not a speck of sunshine about it

if only as a reminder to look up,
and be inspired
because there is this thing about people,
they take the black bits
and plant a garden