Your mouth holds secrets that hide between people's legs, in the crooks of their elbows, in their napes of their necks
You, hide keys under your tongue that I may unlock
You are so used to
Harboring cold
Even though you are cold
Open
Your legs
So I can stay inside
So I can come inside
So I can *** inside
We will stay warm together
We will stay in heat together
In this house
In this body
In this husk
Twitch
Twitch
Switch positions
Move yourself into me
Move yourself around in me
Why are you shivering
You're too cold for all this warm
You're too quiet for all this loud
Hold your lip in place or it will fall off your face
Exploding all over the room won't save you now
Splatter paint only helps when there has been no prior activity
Stand back and watch me flutter all on my own
Stand back and watch as the tremors ripple through my body

Smile, and hold it for me
Right there
Over the ****
*****.
Stick your ****
Stick here
Stay here


**~~a.s.f.

They don't tell you that it feels like fire--that it feels hot, like magma, like smoke and fire alarm and get me out of here. It feels like I Need To Get Out of This Room, but you're the room and you're also not the room. They don’t tell you that everything is melting--including you. There are holes burning in you, and it's not in a trendy way to make you look vintage; you need to be stomped the **** out. It's becoming more and more difficult to hold on to things, since your fingers flammable, ready to strike a match. Everything is so excruciatingly hot and it seems like folks will use your flames to make s'mores, or worse, to light their cigarettes. You can't step outside for air because even fire thrives with oxygen. You're a building, crumbling to the ground in your fiery demise,  almost in slow motion, and it’s okay, because you weren't up to code anyway.


They don’t tell you how underwater it is, how slow moving and in space it is. They forget to mention how it feels like you're drowning all the **** time while everyone is above water. Your head submerged, everything is in slow motion, frozen. Everything needs to be stared at or it will float away and disintegrate. They don’t tell you that everything is blurry to you and only you--no one knows what you're talking about. You're not watercolor--you're a watery, diluted, goopy mess. You sit there, in a puddle of your own demise, sad and soaking wet of your tears. Don’t even try to mop yourself up because the bucket is already overflowing.

What they don't tell you about anxiety disorder is that it is a silent killer. No one wants to help you--they don't want to sit next to you. You make everything sticky with your insecurities and the unknown and you're a mess. You may as well write panic across your forehead because it is emanating from you regardless.


**~~a.s.f.

• because I was questioned for calling Beyoncé a god
• because I was told Beyoncé is overrated
• because some white lady I don’t know touched my hair before she               learned my name at my place of work
• because one of my white friends made a joke about crack houses when we were watching fake anime and eating fried dough…in addition to making that joke, he made me uncomfortable
• because a white friend of mine agreed with someone who said cis white men are the most oppressed group on my campus
• because people still tell me “ALL Lives Matter” and ask me “why isn’t there a WHITE History Month”
• because “I don’t see color” is a “less racist” way of saying “that isn’t my problem, so I don’t have to get involved”
• because girls “like me” are fetishized
• because girls “like me” are seen as the **** of jokes or just the ****
• because I’m the only non-white passing person of color in my dominant friend group
• because #Lightskinned is still a way to humiliate someone for being fairer skinned and having feelings
• because #Darkskinned is still a way to demean someone who is darker than you and painting them as “*****”
• because colorism exists in every racial group, but no one wants to talk about it
• because someone argued why a white person should be able to wear dreads and black people are kicked out of institutions for wearing the exact same hairstyle
• because black on black crime is still used as some sort of crevice you try to shimmy yourself through
• because somewhere, a white girl is teaching tutorials on how anyone can have an afro, and no one is stopping her
• because Facebook exploded when I expressed that I want to be respected
• because everybody wanna be a *****, but no one wanna be a *****
• because I didn’t know what to say until I couldn’t stop speaking
• because we are twenty days into February and Black History Month hasn’t been mentioned by ONE of my professors
• because of ******* course I’m the angry black woman
• because I’m essentially the backbone, which means that it’s easy for me to break, right?
• because this **** happens to me every **** day of my life and it will continue to happen to me every **** day of my life
• because you made it that way
• this poem does not have an ending
• this poem is the abyss
• why do I make it about race?
• because this poem can go on and on and on forever
• and I’ll still be talking about the same thing


**~~a.s.f.

All I has: tight.
My life.
Hard times,
rip.
Are ****** up.
If us, he, we; be light.
ok - are ill i?
"*****, we gon' be alright."
"Na, we gone."
Ego light.
Hear me, eel? Web right.
uh?
feel me?
Hand
recognize you. look in at me. or he.
Bind my side. We look in at you; from the ace. Own
11 with the ***. Own
mind, you, my life.
On me in the light.
What? ***** and jamin' is the highlight.
Well, I love herb. is what I like.
Or now, 20 of i, he.
Tall to come and get. In everything I sow, my arm.
Heave; no -- hear.
So my cord and my mother, king, can stand in silence
for the record.
the world I know is too late.
A girl think? Cray.
A fight, my vice. Day
Won't you please lie when I say?
Now, been hurt, been ow.
Pride? low, look in at he, world. "here we go."
Ate, ill, us in the street.
Mat each door.
Knee get weak; gum blow; we gon' be light.
What you want?
40 acres and i?
Hinge my name. Mad?
Other, you can live all
the evil, I can tell it. I know. It's ill.
Don't think about it, deposit. very hero.
Kin of my partner, the candy. paint it. he regal.
Dig my pocket, profit. Big enough? to you.
day, my logic. Get another doll just to keep you
In the presence. Your chic.
Id, talk about it. Be it. I see cool.
I got it then, now. Reach.
Shut the back.
I'm black, on track and rest assured.
My rights. I write. I'm right.
My head high,
eat and hope.
In me is complicated.
Afraid.
light and you: favorites.
Remember? You was conflicted.
Using you sometimes. I did the same.
Sing my power.
Sent me into a deep depression.
Found myself. Scream in the room.
I wanna self destruct. Evils was all around.
So I went runnin'.

**~~a.s.f.

1) (insert dessert name for skin here)
2) mysterious hair goddesses
3) the back wall of a hip hop video
4) temptresses of your own design
5) the entire land ruled by drama queens
6) your lowkey fantasy
7) your direct blame
8) the subset of a subset of a stereotype
9) the loud and proud
10) the celestial bodies walking through your neighborhoods
11) the only magic act you can see again and again and still not know how it works
12) not the Madea or the Precious, but somehow still the Madea and the Precious
13) trees banding together for the sake of their own leaves AND to sustain the forest

**~~a.s.f.

after the body has decomposed and decayed and is done being with being a body, the insects feast on the flesh, desperate for nourishment.

           1.  after: the close of
               decompose: to separate into parts
                decay: to decompose; to separate into parts; to rot
                 done: to be finished
                 feast: any abundant meal
                  flesh: the sweet, outer coating of a body
                   desperate: having an urgent need for nourishment: something that is necessary for life

First came the blowflies, then the maggots. They attacked you while you were breathing. They thought you were done: to be finished. They crawled in and out of your nostrils, through your gaping mouth, down your throat. Your body took the phrase "being eaten alive" too far.
          
             2. maggots: legless larvae of flies
                     attack: to set upon in a hostile or violent way
                        nostrils: holes in a face that helps a body: the physical structure of a material substance breathe
                        down: on or to the ground
                          throat: the part where insects run through and burrow and live in the not living

You're imprinted into the ground now, your ribs a perch for vultures to peck upon your carcass. Your skull is laced with sand and other sedimentary rock as a nice garnish. Bodies are strewn here, peppered with dynasties of dust, ancestry of asphalt.

           3. ribs: curved bones shaped like armor to protect the heart and other vital organs
                carcass: a human devoid of being
                   skull: the bony framework of a head
                      laced: the lightly draping of a thing
                       garnish: the supply with; to decorate; to lace: lightly drape a thing
                            ancestry: generations and generations of sediment forming into people forming into lives forming into experience forming into decay: to separate into parts


**~~a.s.f.

I am sad, Dad. EMPTY.
ELEPHANTS don't forget, Dad.
I'm an avalanche, a hurricane, a natural disaster; I crumble.
Hold the magnifying glass over my new car and watch it BURN.
YOU DON'T GET IT!
I traveled to another country all by myself!
Brick by boring brick, dad.
I feel a hailstorm coming and it's named after your daughter.
I feel like I'm blowing up like dynamite.
Understand, dad, stars aren't supposed to feel like empty sweaters.
Feelin' like a sculpture right about now...fancy, but not enough to be alive.
Dear ol' dad: