You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.

My grandmother asked, “Does it feel like being widowed?”

you know that
baby swallows make silver ripples
in wild rivers to court reeds?

Every so often, they add a tattoo
in honor of some long-forgotten love.

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

The sin is existing.

There is so little left of the tomato plants.

He has stories that I am not in
anymore. It’s healed this way.

Okay, picture this: We’re in an elevator. The elevator shuts down. It doesn’t matter where we’re going, only that we’re alone.

I would always rather be happy than
dignified. Rather held than held
in awe.

Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time

and then her eyes fully opened — blazed through with strands of mud

Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.

If America is Babylon / and you are an exile / newly arrived among pagans / Catholic, ‘Ngolan, Black, woman / you already know how to pray

In my universe, my arm carries a heart and flowers,
my back a misguided quote

my love is a glass shard, a knife made of madness and moonlight,
and there are already way too many fragments in this house

I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…