Someone asks you
                         “Tell me something good that happened to you today”
                       My reply......



         I woke up and I’m alive....

o, rèmy martin dreamer,
with cheap hen on your breath.
the good brown is not the backwoods
or juul pods in virgina tobacco,

&

maybe the good brown manifests in my hair,
before the ammonia, touching my scalp
and turning it as red as my tongue after
a strawberry lollipop. everything
tastes like you.

&

i wish i could touch you again,
just hold your hand, brush your
elbow, play with your hair.
but i also wish i could drive a thousand
machetes into your flesh, while screaming

&

writhing with trash-sickened fervor .
you are *****-inducing. you smell
like a thousand patchouli-burning
stoners, but you feel like velvet
and taste like sugar-sweat.
you might be popping a xan right now,
knee-deep in beautiful girls.
and i'm still dope-sick.

he tells me he'll buy me a white house
with a picket fence and i laugh because
it sounds so absurd to me
why would anyone want to live in
this plastic world of despair
i mean, maybe i'm judging it too hard
but i just can't see myself
driving a mini-van with two kids
crying in the backseat complaining
and calling me "mom" as if they their
mother-tongue was not Urdu
i can't do soccer games and ballet lessons
or wait every night at 8PM to have a
family dinner
i am not anyone's wife in an apron
and there is nothing wrong with choosing
the american dream
just that its a nightmare for me
i want to finger paint the house a
million shades of rainbow
i want to tie a braid in my hair
and lie under the sun
let it kiss me until i'm brown
and free.
i want my children to blast
bollywood and dance with me
no choreography, just love
i want a husband who falls in love
with my henna covered hands and
the way i smell of the sea
i can't see myself settling to a world
where everything looks just the same
or a man who loves me in a clean,
innocent way
i know this sounds stupid and i'm not
one for crazy romance but
laughing during *** and screaming during fights
is something that feels more than alright
i like the edge and the stability in knowing
that you're not going anywhere, we're going
everywhere
i want my children to climb on their father's back
and tickle him until he cries
i want them to paint his nails
and tie his hair in little ponytails
i want them to go to the beach and not worry
about getting sand in between their toes
i want them to wake up in the morning
with their messy hair and lopsided smiles
i want them to run around the house
the way their parents did
chasing each other only to fall
into each other's arms.

from between the soft-pink
of your lips,
pillows of moonlight fall.

the moment we never met held
nothing but shame for me,
longing gazes across the field.

you didn't know i existed.
oh, to be young. and dead.
i recovered from my bought of goodbye cruel world

instead, yours took you.
i dance underneath your teeth
in the softness of nightingale tears.

i arise, with dreams of nothing
but your face.
will i see you again,
this time under the stars?

"She was an
unusual dresser.
Every night,
she wore bruises
on her heart,
love on her lips,
pain in her eyes,
and ink on her fingers.
They called her poetry."

o, darling
daylight has never been your most flattering
light

and how could it be?
you never sleep,
because life is but a dream

like that old
children's song
goes

dear god of boujee
women, the ones with
bloodstained louboutins

let me autotune myself to sound inhuman,
say my prayers to
you

in the dying light
of the atl
freeways

my only hymn i have to
offer is that of
migos

and instead of bread and wine
i have lean and
xanax

o, darling
our eyes will never
age

and new money, who dis?
will forever be the closest thing
we have to a mantra