eternal tales of unrequited self-love.

My name is Musu & write emotional, self-indulgent poetry.

[seaux-leaux]

a text message: 12:37 am. 

hi daddy,

i haven’t heard from you in a while so i just wanted to check and see how you were doing. how have you been? how are your students? have you heard from aunty zainab and hawanatu? i got your birthday message a few weeks ago. thanks for the kind words. i’m glad i make you proud.

i’m good. school has been fine. i actually hate school and have been spending the past year weaving in and out of thoughts of self-afflicted death. you know all about these feelings though, i’m sure. our conversations were always silent ones, my journals as voice, your eyes as receivers while I was away. you remedied my feelings by drawing me closer to the blade, then called me ungrateful. 

chicago is fine. i live with my boyfriend and my cat taraji now. i never formally introduced him but you’ve met before. you yelled at him three years ago while we sat cross-legged on my bedroom floor, watched a documentary on selma, alabama and ate candied yams. i cried a lot that night but now we joke, mostly about how he never got to eat the rest of his cornbread. later that night, he told me he saw the wrath of god in your eyes. 

i shift my gaze in our most loving moments. i fear he’ll see you in my eyes. he kisses my forehead and denies it, but the limits of my belief bleed though. i know you’re always there, a mourning murder of crows in my chest. most bitter presence, most miserable layer of all the “fuck yous” on my tongue left unspoken. my doctor says its anxiety, but i know my body well. i know you are there.  

i want to tell you that you’d like him but i’d be lying. he loves me whole and full. you’ve only ever loved me in pieces. 

i see such pained tenderness in the corners of his face sometimes when i mention you. perhaps he traces his own father in the cracks of my voice. you claim me too much. his claims him too little. still, so much real estate for fathers carried on our bodies. we both sit heavy with paternal blood buried deep beneath our folds of skin and muscle.

i forgot to tell you, we went to mexico last month. we went to coyoacán and visited frida’s house. a large cerulean villa, surrounded by agave and oak. a liminal paradise of beauty and death. seeing the two fridas reminded me of how interconnected we are. two beings seated, fingers interlocked, arteries crawling up our necks and constricting air, veins back down our chests, holding us en masse. it is the kind of bond only absent fathers could stitch together. 

i know it hurts to hear it, but my mom is good. just the other day we laughed until we gave each other bellyaches, reminiscing on how messy you were. leftover rice on the countertop and stew on the stove. voicemails that recorded a little longer than intended. overdrawn bank accounts with checks to your girlfriends. mom was always so neat and put together. she managed to keep her tears within the limits of her bedroom. she still cries, sometimes because of you. but her tears are no longer silent; they are violent eruptions. reminders of how hard you tried to contain her limitlessness, and the gravity of your failure.

i often cringe at how much of your face i’ve taken. my eyes both oasis and fury. lips unwilling to heed to a face. a nose spread from coast to coast. i smile and you disappear. i smile and my mother appears. how fitting that i’ve spent so many joyless moments at your hands. the thought of seeing her on my face must have overwhelmed you.

kehmoh is doing well. he’s happy now. breathes lighter. i wonder if you’ve ever seen the ways he hurts himself. bite marks on both wrists when his words to you fall on unwilling ears. i see a tenderness within him that reminds me that he is more of me than he is of you. 

its amazing, really, how such a fragile body could weigh us all down. how i could kill myself three times just to stay in your good graces. the sacrifices my eleven year old conscience made for a fifty year old man.

i’m always here if you want to talk. i’m always here because my body refuses to reject your venom. because my hate cannot co-exist with your presence. i have tried so hard to hate you, but you won’t leave me. and that is probably what i hate the most about you.  

in a perfect world, you’d get this message and apologize. but there are no multiverses with you and remorse cohabiting. 

i look forward to hearing back from you. 

[seaux-leaux]

it is difficult to tell my mother’s mouth and the atlantic apart. 

her man-drowning tongue, prepared to sink those who think themselves brave enough for her sea,

whose venomous spit turn to ash, ash to mud, mud to cool her throat. 

the Portuguese called her body “lion’s mouth” then cut into her flesh,

 dug miner’s picks into her breasts in search of diamonds

she remembered herself and swallowed them whole. 

it is difficult to tell where my mouth meets hers. 

where she is gentle, i am wrath.

where she soothes, i destroy. 

most unrecognizable body,

most barren wasteland,

i should have swallowed whole and saved mercy for myself.

each tear i made with my teeth eroded me

and i want nothing more than to pull them back.

we are here. 

mouth on mouth,

less kiss, more shotgun,

breathing into each other,

making alchemists of ourselves,

fear into glory, 

we take our suffering

and drown them. 

[seaux-leaux]

Nobody likes me when I'm sensitive.

[seaux-leaux]

a remake.

Black body swinging in the southern breeze,

crack body cringing from the southern cree.

black body can’t tell you what strange fruit means,

but can show you,

cue black boy,

beats beats beats blocks,

boy breaks breaks bottles,

boy blazes beneath broadstreet bridge,

breathes easily,

boy breathes easily,

boy builds builds builds bricks

bends and breaks with ease,

boy can sing a pretty sing

boy can bring sunshine and spring,

all these things 

but they only see

basically

bad black boy

basically

biologically broken,

basically,

budding bandit,

black ain’t colorless when white comes along,

black is always strong, they say,

black is always wrong, they say,

won’t stay and fix what they broke,

just color outside and tiptoe around the color lines,

this black kettle is about to boil over,

this crack kettle can’t take it no more,

but let that body utter the word black and 

watch that boy get shut down.

watch that body get shot down,

and left for hours on end,

our black wails like a siren,

but who’s around to hear it?

[seaux-leaux]

a name.

sometimes I fill myself with thoughts of you and I five years from now,

wondering if love will still cling to us like a humid August afternoon,

if your mouth will still taste of the culmination of sweet sadness I’ve grown so used to,

if I’ll reject your tender hands one day,

worse,

if my tearducts will finally dry up at thoughts of you.

sometimes I fast forward to your home library, 

filled with the books we shared and laid on top of,

wondering if you’ll find the teardrops I tucked neatly under my endnotes,

pushed to indescribable emotions, gut-wrenches, agony, hurt, love,

will you read my notes and remember that I once loved you like lorde and morrison, crooned for you like a caged bird?

will my tongue and jaw finally grow strong and limber in the vernacular of us?

or will i regret never having discovered the right language to touch the parts of you that i never could quite speak to? 

sometimes, mostly, i regret not having been born with love as my mother tongue 

and weep. 

[seaux-leaux]

an ode.

1. to how beautifully we fit together underneath the moonlight. 2. to how you hold my frame like I am built from glass. 3. to how you kiss the sin in and out of me simultaneously. 4. to our stolen glances over living room coffee tables. 5. to your ever-fixed, always telling eyes. 6. to your heavy breaths and tender touches. 7. to five and six making homes with each other. 8. to your city for building you. 9. to your hands for building me. 10. to you.

[darkskinnedauntviv]

a a “fuck me” poem

b because there’s something

c casually alluring 

d devilish even, about the 

e ease of your 

f fingers on my flesh

g grasping for 

h hidden temples within me.

i ignite me

j just enough to tease me with an almost-

k kiss, make me 

l long for it,

m memorize your 

n name in moans and 

o “oooohs”

p pull me closer to you on beds &

q quote me on your tongue

r read me on boxsprings &

s search for me with arched fingers

t taste me

u underneath bedsheets  

v vying for our

w wandering, exploring mouths,

x Xes and bite marks all over, your

y yearning heedlessness, our

z zen-like bliss. 

[seaux-leaux]

Mammy sits on my mantle, perched high with wooden spoon in hand, flinging and twirling it in her little ceramic bowl like a baton, arms wide open and inviting for her children, legs shut tight for neighbors and strangers. 

Jezebel hangs close by, head cocked high in allure and lips locked tight in mystery, she with her red heels, daggers on her feet covered in cutthroat sensuality,

and me,

struggling.

These are the women that taught me what my mother could not. 

How to bend backwards and break into perfect smile and poise, how to cradle my wants into your needs until they bud like poison ivy - all my beautiful lilies engulfed by your weeds.

My, how closely "yes'm" resembled the swallowed words I never said for our comfort, for your comfort, as you laid so easily in my withered flower beds, 

You never said

What a flawless performer I was, deflowering myself with such sorrowful, somber beauty for you.

You never said it

But those were the only words I told myself that didn't need your approval for once. 

And me,

In all my subservient glory,

Autumned annually to watch you spring. 

Mammy never warned me about how hard it is to grow a garden of daisies too afraid to let themselves bloom. 

These are the things my mother never taught me. 

How to rest strong, sunkissed thighs on the edges of beds and feel them weaken, tight eyes and wandering fingers, letting "yes" escape my lips and convincing myself until I mean it. 

How stunning it is to utter the word "no" and hear the thud and pulses and motions come to a screeching halt at the leisure of my powerful tongue.

How beautifully my tone flows when coated in dominance, how lovely it feels to be on top.

Until "no" becomes a weakened rope and knots forget their place as synonyms and I find myself tightly gripped in foreign hands. These are words my mother could not imagine having to teach me.

When "no" becomes an invitation to finish.

When I realize I have been speaking my vocabulary to myself.

When I've reached wit's end and have wasted all of my most beautiful metaphors. 

When my flowers must reteach themselves to bloom on even the stormiest days. 

Mammy and Jezebel look down from the mantle, eyes pleading at me to learn a lesson or three, and me,

struggling,

stumbling,

grappling. 

[seaux-leaux]

on finding my blackness (written in 2013)

I knew I was home when I didn’t have to search for a small corner aisle to find natural hair products. The streets of Accra, Ghana were woven in shea butter and ankara headwraps and completely shaded in blackness. My blackness. Not the blackness I carried like a heavy cloak back home in the United States, tucked and nestled comfortably in “Check Your Race” questionnaire boxes and lingering looks in Neiman Marcus. Not the fluorescent blackness that illuminates me in the most inconvenient of circumstances, in failed attempts to hail taxis in the rain and eternal strain from others in the presence of my afro. Not the blackness that creeps in like a suppressed accent -- “r’s” and “aint’s” held too long on the tongue to be taken seriously by white america. That blackness disappeared the moment I felt myself surrounded by deep brown faces at the airport. I stopped feeling the need to compete for the title of black girl who puts us all on the map when I finally found my way to the other end of the map. 

The called me black beauty as I moved my way through the market like I wasn’t already sold on the beauty of my own blackness. Even as an outsider in this foreign country, I felt at home in my own body. All the things I made extra efforts to conceal in the U.S. - rebelliously unshaven legs and wide thighs - were on full display anywhere I went. African pride settled in before shame could make a home in me. 

Who am I? I am a darkskinned black girl who has learned to fall in love with the deepness of her own skin through the love of West Africa. 

[seaux-leaux]

pseudo-haiku for my black panther father (written in 2012)

i, too, feat white men.

malcolm's grave is still haunting.

so my fro's staying. 

(deal with it).

[seaux-leaux]

ceilings.

i forget myself when i'm trying to control you.

between name calls and whimpers, i forget myself trying to please you. 

when i am on my back, there is no white light; i still see the ceiling. 

i try to loose myself from you by laughing too hard at meaningless jokes

and pressing my body on those of others,

i'm losing myself.

i try to forget you when i'm trying to control you,

i try to impress you so you'll remember me,

so you'll accidentally slip up and say my name,

check up on me and delete the history

i can't delete our history.

i try to forget you when i find strangers who look like you,

who sing as badly to the car radio,

i haven't kissed them to shut them up like i've so badly wanted to do with you. 

i can't control myself when i am around you. 

there is no white light; i can still see the ceiling.

[seaux-leaux]

I used to write love poems to boys; now I write them all to my mother.

when my mom first came to this country, her first job was at cvs pharmacy. fast forward through that familiar story she always tells me, something about drugs getting lost in the language barrier between cashier and customer; the story doesn't sound right in my mother tongue, but i can't seem to say it in hers. 

when my mother first came to this country she had tight jheri curls, something reminiscent of an eighties hair care commercial, only made better by the fact that she was married to my father, the man with the sky-high afro. the black power couple with million man t-shirts in the boudoir and framed pictures of malcolm and mandela in the living room. those were different times, she tells me as she helps me pull my thick hair back into braids so i look presentable in class the next day. 

when my mother was twenty, she was twenty and in love. not with my father, i'm sure, but with little things. the gentle smile of her new nephew and the height of her father's mango tree in the frontyard. i know my mother dreamt of holding hands with her him, too. of sneaking through easten and kissy street and wishing for the streetlights to go out because darkness made his brown skin that much deeper. his eyes looked so much sweeter...

i'm sure my mother had her ho moments, too. 

when my mother mother to this country, she was twenty-seven and in love with the unknown. something must've clicked within her - that same feeling that creeps in between my dreams of dropping acid with strangers in chicago apts and sketching myself in a lover's bed in new jersey. my same mother that once wept in fear on an amusement park ride boarded a plane to rebirth herself in the states, a land sticky with hate and grievances - my mother singlehandedly breathed new life into these airs.

when my mother arrived in this country,

she gave birth to a nation within me. 

[seaux-leaux]

I got a new journal after three years worth of pages in my old one. Pray that me and whatever I choose to name my new beauty make it to twenty-one.

[seaux-leaux]

for my mother on her forty-ninth birthday.

1. Every few months after cussing out my father, my mother would remind me "I got the good conduct award in school when I was younger." Somewhere in between accidental voicemails and infidelity, my mother forgot how to hold her mouth. 2. I started questioning my faith in God when my second grade teacher, a woman who's voice would fill our classroom with church hymns told my mother with god-like honesty that I wasn't really sick all of those times I said I was, that I just wanted to go home to be with her. I couldn't believe in a woman of God scratching away at the weekday bond I so badly wanted to form with my mother. 3. My tongue will never be able to bend like hers. Even with dropped Rs and misplaced letters, her "I love yous" will always manage to sound more beautiful than mine. 4. I still secretly admire her for hitting my father with a cordless phone. 5. I never asked for a lot of things: the frustration of my full name and our fights in the morning, my big forehead and feet, my heart that never stops beating with empathy and grudges that hold like goldfish. My mother breathes reckless giving. 6. Our accents blend so beautifully over Celine Dion. 7. Weekends were never long enough. Bowie was never close enough. 8. Her vulnerability makes me want to learn how to cry properly. How to find my peace in volcanic eruptions of emotion. How to hug until atoms touch. 9. Forty-nine years and reasons will never suffice.

[seaux-leaux]

To The Girl Who Told Me I Never Cried.

1. When my dad cried into my small shoulders at his best friends funeral

2. When I couldn’t find any other way to mourn the ten year remembrance of the end of my parent’s relationship

3. When I told you I was struggling with my sexuality and you asked for a threesome

4. When my grandfather’s dementia robbed him of memories of me

5. When I left my adopted sister who loved me like flesh

6. When my fifteen year old brother and I walked home and I caught the glimpse of the neighborhood watch sign

7. When my mother tried to threaten the budding queer out of me

8. When my daddy gave me the sex talk two years too late

9. When I pause each time I answer the phone in fear of sobs on the other end

10. When I am homesick and tired, guilt-ridden and weak

11. When you kissed your girlfriend’s cheek in front of me and laid with me after

12. When the Mirabal Sisters left me one by one, page by page

13. When my cramps engulf me like seawater

14. When my father refuses my apologies

15. When my mother’s bank account swells and empties with my tuition money

16. When pride substitutes my skipped dinners

17. When you remind me of my skipped dinners

18. When I don’t get what I want

19. When I forget to say Allhamdulillah on difficult days

20. When I am challenged

21. When my brother grows taller

22. When my phone calls just to hear your voice go unanswered

23. When I am up past one thinking of you

To the girl who told me i never cry,

you haven't cried in a while, either. 

[seaux-leaux]

nine confessions.

i pray every night that my steady repentance will negate my bad karma.

i tuck secrets behind my teeth and creep them in like silent letters.

my faith is built on uneasiness and physical advances. 

i spent second grade crying into free school lunches and trying to scrub my black away. 

i built a kingdom on the memories of a tyrant. 

i am uncertain about most things: the cities i will love and leave, the number of metro trains i’ll miss to lay with you, how many “sorrys” I will utter to my father.

my mother blessed me with a beautiful mouth. 

my wisdom does not reach far beyond my wants, and i’m young enough to make peace with this. 

i probably won’t be straight in ten years. 

[seaux-leaux]

letters to myself.

dear lips, your fullness excites them. fuck them. 

dear tongue, speak my beauty into existence.

dear eyes, find me.

soul; you’ll learn to creep easily between existences. you were not a sinner in a past life, just trapped in troubled flesh. you will write the seas. you are a siren. entice them. 

dear hips, sway harder against the breeze and make them believe that you birthed the motherland.

dear feet, beat the ground harder. toughen up. 

dear skin, you are brown silk.

body; make my temporaries permanent, uncertainties to muscle memory. keep me in the company of tender words and soft gazes. mold me into steel for bullets. hold me.