My brain and tongue just met

Sometimes, I write.

[poorlittlerichboys]

11/9

dear heavn,

i hope you’re up to something i hope you know how many people look up at (what they think is) you and shed a mountain of their doubts  one for every day spent on anything but love dear heavn, what i am failing to say is when you are knee-deep in needs, it is easy to forget what you want and i want joy i want to wake up in the morning to myself loving  myself wanting myself  for all that i am not dear heavn, i was looking for myself in all of the wrong places but today i looked up hi, how are you? i know you’re up to something, something good

[poorlittlerichboys]

11/8

mother knows better than most mother knows best mother knows when he is lying through his crooked teeth mother knows when our sunflowers are three days away from their death mother knows just how long to let the hibiscus cry itself into the cold water

tell me, mother how do I know when to let go? how do I turn back time to when I was six and unafraid of most things? how do I let love swim all the way back in?

[poorlittlerichboys]

11/7

the waiting

the wondering 

if you are good enough

if you are enough 

for a lifetime

or maybe just, for a day

that is what hurts the most.

the wondering,

the waiting for him to return to you.

[poorlittlerichboys]

11/6 ; questions on a first date

how many countries deep is your wound?

are you warm?

do you remember her last words on the phone?

what keeps you up at night?

can we cuddle?

when was the last time you called back home?

if I let you in, will you steal the covers?

do you still hold your mother’s hand in public?

are you warm?

can you keep my love safe?

do you want the last piece?

did it hurt, the last time she left?

how’s your father these days?

do you miss her?

are you warm?

will you trust me with your nightmares?

how many stars can you name?

I mean, how many people can your heart hold together?

I mean, can I keep you warm?

[poorlittlerichboys]

11/5

meeting you, holding you, was like God wiping the crust off my eyes and saying: Here, look. at all the ways you can love and be loved. forgiveness comes in many different shades and I choose you.

[poorlittlerichboys]

11/4

to define something before it defines itself to name something is to have power over it so before you scan the length of my body,  before your arrogance  chooses who you want me to be  submissive oppressed weak

and

weak

and 

weak

before you make me smaller than who I really am, a universe of a woman before all of that nonsense, I choose to name myself beautiful I name myself worthy; enough, even. I name myself in every language this tied-up tongue can recall and I do not translate I do not dismember this body and all of the forgotten history it fights to carry everyday I call myself by the name of every woman I am and all the ones I have yet to become.

and if you let me, I’ll name you lover and name this, love and will compassion into the mouth of a world that is starving yet too proud to reach its hand out.

[poorlittlerichboys]

11/3

the headlines today read:

BLK GRL beaming BLK GRL brewing BLK GRL ain’t bitter BLK GRL ain’t got time to be hurt ‘cause BLK GRL furious BLK GRL bleeds joy but BLK GRL knows you expect her to be  angry  BLK GRL wants you to look her in the eyes  BLK GRL wants BLK GRL worth something kinda cosmic

[poorlittlerichboys]

11/2

i am all brown skin and swallowed tongues. not the kind that will keep you warm at night but the kind you’d want to have say your name over and over and over again like trying to memorize an irregular heartbeat. people think they know themselves more than anyone else but we really, really don’t know shit. except that when we hurt, we know how much we want to believe that we’ll be okay and that some day, all four seasons will sit together at a large table and discuss how to love and how to leave love where you last took it from or rather, who you last took it from. nobody will take notes at this meeting because it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what loneliness tastes like in a mouth that just wants honest company. what I’m trying to say is I will watch your hair turn gray and kiss every silver strand if you let me and maybe all you need is someone to tell you you’re beautiful but I will be there every morning to remind you how strong your soul is. which is to say, my love language is this. poetry. i guess I can try to hold your hand or rub your back but when i write about you, when I write to you, what I’m actually saying is that I hear light in your unrestrained laughter. i see a tomorrow in your smile. and the day after, too. i see a future I’d even let my own children dream about.

[poorlittlerichboys]

11/1

jidou’s eyes walked out the door long before his Memory did but when his Memory left us, it ran away in the middle of the night Packed up the names of all his grandchildren-- folding them up one by one, and tucked them in pockets only God can reach when I looked at him I’d imagine his eyes,  ghosts, gone but starting back at mine like I was still his favorite maybe he thought I was my mother, but at least he’d recognize someone in me when I held his hands, led him around the house they built  when I gave him directions in a language he didn’t even speak I wonder if anything came back to him if he found any light in the darkness if he slept, scared and not knowing who in this world loved him if he knew how much I did.

[poorlittlerichboys]

day 1

today, i choose to unmake the memory of us

gently, without haste &

with the caution of someone who loves you, honestly

the way my mother’s callused fingers unraveled my long hair, one braid at a time

before i decided i prefer my hair six inches shorter

before i learn what lightness tastes like

it’s kind of a funny story;

the way the human brain remembers a cherry-picked basket of good memories

the kind that make us want to stay, 

dig our toes so deep into sinking sand and 

make a home out of the loss.

it’s kind of a tragic story; our cognitive ability to compartmentalize our hurt, swallow it whole and spit ourselves out:

unscathed,

or at the very least unassuming.

it’s kind of an impossible story; 

how the human brain can will the rest of us into a deceptive sense of satisfaction, 

convince our hearts to, just, take it. and be okay at the end of it all.

memory attempts to compensate for love, sometimes successfully.

in my dreams,

you are present.

a steady, immovable fixture of a body and soul. 

a man whose eyes can hold the entire meaning of the universe, on some days.

i remember us, incorrectly, but it is the only way I can recall the ruins without becoming one.

i dream myself up as open: a ripened piece of stone fruit

whose stubborn pit you managed to carve out--

make room for love to grow instead.

i recount myself stronger, 

more truthful with myself, with you too.

and i, less of a coward, unwilling to rock a sinking boat.

in this version you know exactly what I want because I tell you

i imagine always uttered into the emptiness where only our breaths and hesitation lay intertwined,

you see, my memories are ironed out in places where they have no business being such

i pencil in joy where heartache was once scribbled out

i make something more fulfilling out of all the pieces we gave up for each other

i forget that a love is possible where one says to the other:

here. take me, all of me. (yes this beating heart too)

i know you will leave me full, anyway.

today, i choose clarity over distortion.

i choose to see all of our shortcomings and failures in full color, 

and keep my eyes open wide through it all.

i choose a memory that tells an honest story,

i do not smile through it all but i remember to live through the ache.

to love through it, even.

[poorlittlerichboys]

for muslim girls who have considered suicide when iman is not enough. to the sisters who can’t bring themselves to face a city they have never set foot in. whose knees haven't felt the redemption of grandma’s sijada for the third week in a row. in your dreams, you bloody your knees in prostration hoping that if you busy your tongue with prayer you can plea purpose into your life. in your nightmares you do not believe in God. for muslim girls who are told depression is just a side effect of doubt. the girls who swear they have heard the sound of spine cracking under the weight of family honor. of endless expectations. of becoming more symbol than human. the ones who found religion in the beating hearts of dim basements and soft hands. the girls who desperately want to believe and the ones who do but are told not enough. for the muslim girl whose body has not left her bed’s embrace in too many days. sinking is supposed sin, soaking in self-loathing. for turning the shape of his mouth into a house of worship, his skin into scripture. for managing to be too much and not nearly enough in the same supplication. 'questioning is for the cowardly. the shameful. the undeserving of breath.' since when did living require permission and whose are you looking for? for muslim girls who would rather hurt themselves than cause harm to anyone else. you are afraid that you will slice yourself open and won’t stop pouring. spilling your insides inside out. you do not want to leave an ugly stain behind. you would rather go quietly. clean. all hushed whispers and round edges. you would rather tiptoe around the part where your eyes close and the door shuts gently behind you. maybe even, you would rather remain. for muslim girls who have considered suicide when the world was not enough. have you ever wondered what God was thinking when he molded you into being? when he breathed life into you, did his breath smell like dark roast coffee? or something sweeter? there is a universe inside you growing each day you decide to love too hard or brave the world with your softness. they say you are impossible: faith does not go well with the fear of living. but I bet. I bet if you were stuck in a room with God and walked a step towards him, He will run to you. and if the ocean becomes ink for love letters from your Lord, surely the ocean would be drained before His words ever come to an end.

D.S. , for muslim girls who have considered suicide / after Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls

[poorlittlerichboys]

when you come face to face with your ugliness, greet her good morning in seven different tongues kiss her curls awake before the sun does take her out for stuffed red velvet pancakes and always, always pay the bill Keep giving until she understands that her worth is immeasurable Sit together and watch her stretch the muscles of her mouth like a generous accordion Peer into the depths of this barely visible black hole Call it introspection You've left her hungry for so long she began devouring herself inside out See, you are meeting the woman you never wanted to be so make small talk first, try fixing later Or don't fix anything at all What's a band-aid to a bloodied mess when you are your own casualty? Look what you've created in the eye make yourself at home in the awkward silence, sit proudly atop the pregnant pause Lend her your ears until she learns to trust you again You owe yourself at least that. When you find an empty seat next to the loneliest translation of yourself hold her hand with unyielding tenderness-- the soft strength you reserve only for others Ask her why you love yourself in small doses like rations of stale food-- I mean self love is a limited resource and you live like it is perpetually running out like safeguarding your soul is more selfish than survival Ask her why you are willing to make a hundred excuses for a stranger before granting yourself an ounce of forgiveness Ask her why it feels so wrong to want to feel good or want anything at all If she does not answer, hold your temper, hold her closer and together recall the three five seven year old girl who considered you the whole universe caught in a little capsule of a body the one who thought you beautiful when she scraped her knees and wept for hours and again when she cut off her braids with a pair of rusty kitchen scissors and again when she learned the acts of love and hurt are not exclusive Talk to her this little girl who is still there still wanting you to want yourself Read her this poem this profession of neglect this confession of preaching a sermon your own tongue has forgotten the taste of Repeat after her: there is no wrong way to be woman there is no wrong way to be woman there is no wrong way to be woman and aching and incomplete and alive in the same broken breath there is only this You vessel of love and you can only give so much as you retain The next time you come face to face with yourself, be kind.

meeting myself, D.S.

[poorlittlerichboys]

city boy with a ghost smile, distant stuck elsewhere and the eyes that move mountains, move me somewhere other than here boy with hands hooked around this cracked soul unmake me take everything down, loosen the knots and bring the world down to my ankles city boy, with the supernova of dreams caked underneath a dirty conscience and a mouth that awakens my spine, spell my name like a native tongue teeth tearing through each letter tasting sea on skin boy, who can change the world with both hands tied behind your back Boy, with a map for a heart Make a home out of me.

wandering without the lust, D.S.

[poorlittlerichboys]

my Resistance is knees crouched kissing the floor spine bent forward into forgiveness body facing a city I’ve never set foot in It’s praying while questioning while dried up with doubt while merely mortal

writing when i think no one is watching

[poorlittlerichboys]

diaspora. /noun. meaning: the rupture between me and my origins. my earliest memory is my blood breaking at birth a painless uprooting from the womb I wasn’t looking for anything in my mother, I just was. When I was little, the closest to home I felt was having my grandmother’s wrinkled fingers run through my hair, molding scalp into canvas Her timeless touch whispered tales of women who carried a beauty so black, it took centuries to straighten their spines. diasporic an internally displaced self I learned to shrink at the sound of the word the internet tells me I am a third culture child. third culture child me does not run out of identity. third culture child me is full. Free. never hungry. never searching. they say I am lucky to have so much culture. I am lucky but I am also loss. and space. and insurmountable distance. a body of oceans that never meet. born drowning, there is no land in me. I am a native tongue, so watered down I taste like salt water and betrayal I wonder what it feels like to kiss me, to taste crisis and confusion in the same breath to know that I can barely carry a home for one. when I first learned the term “Afro-Arab” at sixteen, I clung to it like a lifeboat until I learned that I was too arab for the African too african for the Arab summers spent in Sudan, do not feel like a belated return but a reminder that some people can be born in exile too this too that too much too much and Never just enough I am a sudden split, not quite symmetrical. I rupture when I breathe, cause chaos, naturally disequilibrium. denial of myself diaspora

i am this word i do not understand, d.s.

[poorlittlerichboys]

a brand new baby was born, yesterday Just in time. and she is not a Problem child She is just in time a brand new baby was born new life makes life easier to understand.

(thoughts from a well-lit coffee shop)

[poorlittlerichboys]

A revolution is brewing in the space between your hand and my thigh I am so tired of controlling my chaos Take this white flag, wrap it around us both. Don't think about tomorrow the headlines, the fallout Don't think about the fire, Today our bodies protest underneath the quiet of these covers.

when the fighting wears you down and all is left is skin, D.S.