my husband's edition.
serves: zero.

prep time depends
on how long it takes
to ruin good produce.

ignore the recipe notes,
yet follow everything,
measure with a scale.

somehow still oversalt,
add enough pepper
to weaponize the broth.
let it simmer, thicken,
until you’re questioning
your methods.

when its texture turns
from soup to sponge,
try to rescue it
with store-bought cream
and forty-five minutes later,
hovering between uber
and just eat,
plate it with a hint of regret
and the admittance of defeat.

My sister got married today
I'm so proud of her for finding a great man

My sister gets married next year
I'm so happy that she found a guy like him

I hope I get married
So they can say that they're happy and proud that i found you

I love you until
                             The sun explodes
                             The moon erodes
                              and the earth implodes
Forever and Always

Today would've been Mom and Dad's anniversary if they were still alive.
They got married sixty years ago today on September the 25th of 1965.
Today is also the anniversary of my sister-in-law and brother.
Back in 2013, I had to say goodbye to my father and mother.
After living for six and a half decades, Mom and Dad passed away.
If they hadn't died, they would've been married sixty years today.

I know he screams
I know he lies
He's practically the devil
Right there in disguise

But if that's the case
Then why is he here
Why have you loved him
For all of these years

Charmful and witty
You weren't prepared
So why'd you marry
Just to live your life scared?

Middle age is a drawer of bottles,
labels rubbed blank,
small tablets stamped
with numbers I can’t read,
others chalk-white,
anonymous as bones.

That August night I woke,
a moth in the moonlight,
wings two halves of a Viking ship.
They say if it maps all four corners
you’re finished.
My head bricked with mucus,
her throat raw-
our marriage a duet
two instruments coughing through the score.

I whispered- moth,
as her eyes opened, glowing like sunken lanterns.
It weighed two thousand pounds,
wings lifting her hair
like a bride of the dead.

Two optimism pills
waited on my table.
I chewed them dry,
chalk cementing my tongue,
the insect’s brain ticking in my skull
like a clock in a gothic castle.

Then water rose inside us-
first a seep, then a tide,
spilling warm rivers across the floorboards.
The dark room brightened green,
cypress arms cracked plaster,
reeds whispered spells older than fever.

Fireflies stitched lanterns along the walls,
crocodiles slid through like priests of the river.
We held hands as the bed turned pirogue,
drifting through brackwater green.

Above us the moth circled-
no longer omen but guide,
its wings stirring moonlight into spell.
Papa Legba opened the crossing,
Maman Brigitte lit the reeds with flame.
We: two elders slipping from sickness into swamp,
breath turned to whirlpools,
our oaths ferried
on the moth’s traité tide.

He feels something is wrong.
even while he sleeps
a distance he cannot cross
when his eyes are closed but open
when her body lies beside him
yet never within his reach.

He can feel her sadness through him,

while her silence grows heavy.

He doesn’t know what to do

with hands she will not hold,

with lips that turn away,

with a heart that stiffens at his touch.

At night he hears the whispers
when she thinks that he is dreaming,

her secret sighs when she believes he’s gone.
and the hidden lump beneath them.
As small as a secret, but sharp as a thorn,
a toy she turns to 
where his love cannot follow.

Why not him?

Why not the man who longs 
to give her everything?

He doesn’t understand.

why she cannot bear his touch.

She tends to herself in silence,

while he lies awake
pretending to sleep
aching over a love
 and lust
he cannot mend.

Love Is Fireworks
A riot of color that screams across the sky,
visible from heaven but never held.
It ****** your eye, burns your sight,
etches the face into your retina like a divine warning:
"You will never see them like this again".
It's never blindness, just an overdose

Then,
Marriage turns blind
Blind to the fire you still carry.
It sees the chores, not the devotion.
It praises the schedule, not the soul.
It forgets the spark that seared your eye
and calls the ash commitment.
Marriage doesn’t ask what you feel, it assumes.
It doesn’t look, it remembers.
And memory is a poor prosthetic for vision.

Loved but still unseen
And that is the blindness
no firework could ever warn you about.