I miss the way he feels.
Under me.
On me.
Beside me.

Under me watching my every move.
Guiding my waist.
Lips being smushed as I warn him
To monitor his moans
Although I enjoy hearing him whisper
Yes, yes, yes

On me pressing his weight so I can't move
His face so serious until I pull him so close I can't see him anymore
Thrusting his body so that each stroke feels like someone is bulldozing my body
Wondering how no one can hear us because our bodies are screaming so loud and breaths becoming so rhythmic
it's almost disrespectful

Beside me letting me fall asleep on his chest while he plays video games as he waits to wake me back up
Kissing me all the while so I have the sweetest dreams
forehead, kiss
hair, kiss
hand, kiss
cheek, kiss
Then I'm up

I miss the way he feels under on beside
Me.
I just want you near.

It's like you threw a curve in me
Never understood how love songs could make me blush as if they were written for me personally
Thank you for making me feel like I'm the prettiest girl in the world
Until I met you
Smirking at my screen
No matter what I have on he thinks I'm beautiful
Reminding me of all the times you just ignored my glasses, bonnet, cornrows, and even how you met me with swollen eyelids and no voice
Make me scream I'm all yours
Holding back because I don't know how to feel
Alone in a room, but all these notes are warming me like
the last snowflake on the first day of spring

Sounds of Love

I wish I could write you a love song
Singing a broken melody that never could find fluidity
until
you.
A compilation of complications.

Her lips are dark like purple.
I stare and wonder how they got that way, not shocked when she whips a lighter out when it's requested.
Her boyfriend is a stoner so I'm not utterly shocked. I'm just shocked at the music that flows out of those purple lips. From high to low from hums to raps she keeps going no matter the song, so
easy. Just as easy as it is to listen. God
bless the DJ.

If this is what love feels like, I will never fault someone for chasing it, being addicted, constantly in a rush to get back.
Once you know it, you can't forget it. When you know it you'll realize how wrong you were about every mediocre feeling that came before it.

This is
Something I've never known, but always knew the answers were within my reach. Somewhere. I never thought I'd find them in you.

The good thing about God is that he keeps preventing me from leaning on my past crutches no matter how hard I try. So while I think he's letting me fall, he's really teaching me how to stand. . .

fall…
crazy hard young all at once
don't let them tell you any different
your love is strange and beautiful
it is your own
claim it and never let go

19 year old woman killed in fatal car accident on 76th and Hampton.

5 blocks from my home.

I drove past the scene.

It was someone I knew. A someone that always spoke when she saw me, a kind heart. She was beautiful with youth and so many knew her as she will be remembered.

It's scary. It could've easily been me. I'm scared. These car accidents are becoming more fatal, these bullets are losing names, we're losing faces. God is calling us home so rapidly I'm terrified. Is the world ending? How am I still here.

I woke up and prayed.

I close my eyes and listen as their voices sing out about the real thing.
Nothing more beautiful than a love song.
The kind where you know the person singing feels every word.
They're singing by experience.
When they sing and you wonder who is the person they're singing to.
Yes, nothing better than a heartfelt love song.
They always give me something to look forward to.
Someone to look forward to sing to.
Someone worth writing a love song.

You can love with eyes open
Not fearing the possibility that
somewhere
someone
is laughing at what they call stupidity
but you know it as love

No one to throw dirt on his name
Kicking it in your face
Because they don't know enough to try to interfere
Oh don't dare interfere

People are nosey
Ooooh and when they know of someones past
they run
with it

See but this time around I don't have to keep my eyes closed
to avoid seeing something that may trigger doubt
that may break this before it starts

eyes just as open as my mind
eyes just as open as my heart

"My mother's a *****. I don't say that out of disrespect, but yeah she can be a real *****. Colder than a homeless man that goes shirtless during a Wisconsin winter simply because he had given the shirt off his back to his   daughter before he lost her. She's not cold to the core though. See, it's just that my mother has been through so much. I like to think of her not as a cold winter, but a late spring. Just as the tulips try to grow through the snow without rain, my mother is just trying to find her happiness but she's just deterred by pain."

Fingers stuck in time grazing complexions similar to cinnamon.
Feeling sweetness not too unlike the cinnamon that melts to create your skin.
My host mother hands me cinnamon to sprinkle lightly over softened apples.
I can't help but think of you.

So wrong its right.
My mind and heart disconnect.
They never really got along.
The right choice never really
Captivated my heart
And the wrong choice never really
Left my mind
But he’s more than what I assume.
His flaws are common for his youth.
He tells no lies.
He hides no truth.
And that is all I ask for.

Call me crazy, setting myself up for a
Failure
But, I told him about you today
Better safe than sorry
Because I don't want him to interfere
He always was the extreme type
The guy that forever remains in the dark
Until that night when he texts you while your boyfriend is holding your phone
Or face times you at 3am and keeps calling because you normally answer
He even calls sometimes when you ignore just because its obvious your not sleeping
So yes
I warned him

"You have a boyfriend?"
"No, but I met someone"

Far fetched but
I've felt more for him these past 3 weeks
then i've felt for this man i've known for years
Because he has promise,
It's not purposeless

Not a way of making him jealous
But proving that someone out there
knows i'm worth something besides
sometime loving

So many promising things the future holds, but something always brings me back to you.  Scared of going on knowing forever would exist without you. Everyone's so excited for the new change and growth that's bound to come, yet there's a fear in me that breaks inside when I picture a day without you becoming normal. I guess I'm more afraid of it not phasing you. You don't even realize the effect a person that comes so last minute into life can have until they're being taken away. Im not looking forward to missing you,  staying up all night wishing you were next to me, wondering if you feel the same way. All the change that's happening, but it can't change my love for you.

I stood in the mirror and looked at everything.
Everything that makes up this body of mine.
I claim as mine and fall in love with every inch.
It's liberating
It's sensual
It's healthy
Because I look at myself,
I take the time to learn this body
Love this body
Own this body
Unapologetically
I stood in mirror and looked at everything
And loved everything

Aching
It eats away at you and starves you hungry
You guard it, store it for winter or a rainy day
But eventually
You're convinced more will never come
Once this is all gone
And you're more afraid of the not knowing
Then the waiting
So you go over and over and over in your mind
Wondering and doubting and trembling
Pretty soon it'll have eaten all you have and you were so busy worrying you didn't taste what was in front of you
You ached with hunger all those years trying to preserve the it
But it dwindled despite all your guarding and storing for those rainy days
You wanted it so long, so bad, you sacrificed not having it so you could have it longer
Except now it's gone
And you never got what you really ached for
Out of fear of losing it all some day
You were cautious and careful and strategic and a planner and a realist
All the things not needed in love.

That glimmer of sunshine when I force rage upon myself. I don't think you know that you saved me and this wrecked heart of mine. Opening me up more as your calm meets my storm. I'll tell them of a love song that I thought could never be wrote. I'll sing it while my storm rages, I'll hum it while we live in a calm. You are that glimmer of sunshine that opens my heart up to not being alone.

Yesterday was deemed the day nothing would happen, nothing significant, nothing memorable.
Then I lost you.
Slowly slipping through our fingers, we lost us.
Staring into a stranger, I saw all the memories that were never made,
yet feeling all the hurt I silenced for so long.

I'll send you a million song lyrics that speak in circles of all the things I want to say, but I can't.
Not again.
I told myself I'd never be here.
Again.
So i'll elude to the problem
If you don't understand
So be it.
I promised myself I'd never waste my breath or words
about a similar situation.
Holding on to someone that has no available hands, leaving me to grasping at whatever I can get.
I'll never be the odd woman out again.

It is not without great vanity that a man loves a woman. She sits hours upon days, sunsets upon moons, waiting to be missed. He is inconsistent with his efforts, and as her love swells, he retreats back to the mannerisms that exemplify why women want what they can never have. He looks in the mirror feeling so lucky to live in his skin, so lucky to be so loved, while she looks in the mirror wondering what it is about her that does not intrigue him enough to fully commit to a heart as fully committed as her own. He knows his power, he wears it well.
It is with great vanity a man is loved.

Where do the lost souls go?
Do they?
dissolve with our tears
heal with our wounds
pass like time

where can we find all the things they have taken from us?
the spirit she's drained from my body
the strength from my mind

lord
tell me why the broken seek to break me?
because as i scream with anger
my lips quiver in sadness
and in that moment i'm hopeless again
wondering if i am the only one born into this

suffocating

I never understood how he was so good at making me fall so head over heels over and over and over

He gave me the definition of infatuation
Because for my baby I was a fool
I couldn't help it

I don't know exactly how or when but that first moment I looked him in the eyes and knew I was in love was probably the scariest thing ever because I didn't want that feeling to be taken away it wasn't in my control. From that moment I vowed to be everything.

Now look at me
Just a fool
Just waiting

It's scary how real this heartbreak is

Day 4
And I missed you painfully.
Laying in bed missing all the times I came home to your face(times).
It became my favorite time of the day.

Then I have to remember that guy on those facetimes isn't who stands before me now.

In love with someone I haven't seen in a while.

Black bodies
The most hated body
The most athletic body
Because we are taught to run
Before we are born
Born into lives
That are only safe if white

I find you over and over
Your face in my palms
In the walls
In the windows
I daydream of you when Spanish becomes romance and romance is you.
I twist this ring until it's so fixated on my finger a weight is lifted when I take it off. I feel light and strange because each time I twist this ring I am more and more yours than I was the minute before. Wondering how can I love you more than I already do?

Evil thoughts come a little too easy, I speak them unto you as venomous bullets eager to break your spirit. But my thoughts are never really my own, but my fear of what another may speak into you. So I warn you, I prepare you for the pain that may sure enough come. Because people like you don't come around too often. I am your toughest critic, your worst enemy, I am the army. I am the worst case scenario, the eyes of society.

No guilt the morning after.
No evidence of what I’ve given.
No one to know
But the two of us.

thank you for making me happy.
I can't thank you enough for these laughs I can't stop sharing
These smiles I can't stop bearing
Thank you for holding me up
Literally
Laughing at my messiness as you help clean up the mess
You really are something.

I fell in love with him the way you fall asleep: slowly at first, then all at once.

How did it get harder now that you're so close?
Geographically.
As in we share a zip code.

Missing you being far away just so I could imagine the great many ways life would go once we were reunited.
Sharing phone lines feeling more in sync than ever, even when connection failed us *Poor Connection, call will resume shortly

Then you'd reappear, sometimes a tad delayed and blurry,
but there.

*what's wrong love? you look like you've lost your best friend…

No matter who comes and goes
There'll still be room left
He'll make the room
When the space gets too
Tight
Because it's been vacant for a while
Soon it'll be like he never left as he gets comfortable
Refamiliarizing himself with my room
Moving furniture around
Feng shui as our hips sway

It's been few months but there's always room left
There's always room no matter how long he's been gone
So I always save room because he always treats these thighs like his home.

Relapse

I laid in darkness for hours, tossing and turning last night
Thinking and overthinking
Rethinking all at the same time
Coming to conclusions that I make myself believe

Then I have a bad day and nothing can quite ease it the same
And for that conversation I could forget everything that's happened and it's just like August again.
Relapse.
Lawd help me.
I know Rome wasn't built overnight.

I heard his voice before I saw him.
Just seconds before I was telling ol Asha
"He's annoying me. I didn't even talk to him today."
It was the first time in 4 months.

Just as the words left my mouth
I heard his voice telling someone he was coming to see me.
Me

I wondered how he'd known where exactly I'd be.
In my same ol corner, in my same ol chair.

He stayed there with me for four hours.
Sitting across a table we laughed until we choked
We revisited all the things we hadn't been able to say via text or FaceTime.

Oh how I missed my friend.
I vented about my struggles
We laughed at my tenderness.

We discussed sexuality, race, black women, black men.
We discussed our history, and how this moment was really all we needed.

"Remember that awkward talk we had?"
"Why would you bring that up?"
"I was so mad at you"
"Well we're here now"

And I'm just falling right here.

What is it when you can talk to someone straight for 9 hours?

How do you explain it?

I woke up dreading coming back to a place where we can't be who we are in those long conversations.
A place that brings out the worst in us.
Was it you that I told that I love so much?
No,maybe it was someone you could see yourself falling in love with.
hm, I thought it was you.
it was. I just didn't want you to take it back.
A break from everything. No one to tell me what's best for me and my heart. No resentment, no pain.
How do you explain knowing you can only love in one moment?

I find myself in a three- way love affair.
An intersection of different loves that live in me
Love that helps me find beauty, and give it back to the Earth
Give it back to the Lord.

He's helped me love him, give myself to him
and gaining myself in return
It's the beautiful form of true love once you're submerged in his water
and cleansed of all that held you back from love.

He promised love would come through him.

Sending me someone that was made in his form, forcing me to learn
forcing me to open my eyes to new perspectives.
We fall into a three way love affair, putting you first
and being grateful enough to find each other through you.

He's helped me love her.
Singing imperfections with love
Smiling at her reflection at her worst
Taking pride at her best
A weight is lifted because she's blessed enough
to now know the difference between all the loves we thought we had known
and truly what being loved is
what loving is.

It is you.

Day 1 of 365 Happy Days
Summed up with a song by Sara Bareilles


I live here on my knees
As I try to make you see
That you're everything I think I need here on the ground.

But you're neither friend nor foe
Though I can't seem to let you go.
The one thing that I still know is that you're keeping me down.

Something always brings me back to you.
It never takes too long.

It's like she read into my heart and let the cries reign.

Like honey to tea
You sweeten me
Thickening my love, soothing
Repairing me in ways I never knew needed fixing.
Like honey to tea

My love life is like my nails.
I can't really commit to a single shade
because when i look down at my finger tips
I think back to the times when a professional was
manicuring my hands, making them perfect

so these other shades don't really seem to fit
because I miss certain sections
accidentally paint my cuticles
my hang nails are everlasting
i always smear them before they dry
and leave an imprint that shows that I was impatient
and fell asleep

do you see what I'm getting at?
He was more than just a single shade
because from red to violet
they always made him perfect

now i look down at my nail bites and wonder
if my hands will ever reach that beauty my
nail technician would bring out
the same way I wonder if I'll meet someone
that brings the vibrance out in me
someone that makes me feel perfect

I can't commit to a nail color,
because no matter what shade I choose
it'll never amount to you.

Reality of Heartbreak
“See no one loves you more than me,
And no one ever will”
Playing somewhere in the distance
Of my mind as I stare in your eyes
While they attempt to meet
Someone else’s
Accepting not being the only one in your heart,
I shut down and travel to my favorite place.
In love and alone,
I never leave this fantasy world of mine.

I need to break free.
All these commitments I didn't sign up for
Can't leave people behind because they
Need
Me
frustrating
The best word to describe the feeling
Someone pulling you back as you try to break free
They don't notice the strain in your voice
The resentment in your eyes
Because they're too busy belting
"Need me, want me, love me
Stay with me"
And all the while you're thinking
What if I don't want that?
But that's not an option
Because they're pulling everything out of you
Just for you to stay around unwillingly.
Experiencing misery
Feeling lonely in a room full of company
All the while just wanting to
Break free.

My last thought at night
My first when I wake
If it is love, I am alright.
So be it. Let it be.
Love lives, through you into me.

And they would never know that somedays I went hungry
Spreading out snacks
Not being able to spare anything because it would be less to get me by
Choosing between toothpaste or a pack of ramen because my mom "could" only give me $175 in the course of almost 4 months.

I'd hate people, half because of who they are half because of what they had. Security. Infinite meals. No worries. They'd never know when my buzz wore off that I awoke from my dreams in a panic. Ashamed that I finally let myself EAT, have a drink, and a laugh carelessly. Something that wasn't plain white rice or stolen toast or cereal because my host mom was away for the weekend.

It's scary really being that close to starving all the time because you know if you really EAT you'll have nothing left. So you convince yourself that you could stand for a diet and lose all that EATING you were doing when your drawer still had money in it.

for the first time in your life, you have to depend on people other than mom and dad because what they have just wasn't enough. You became that relative or friend. The one carefree in her photos or status, but anxiety filled in direct messages and phone calls.

You're jealous because they don't have to worry about their family being irritable with them because they just had to EAT. And when you come back home you'll have souvenirs and a few pounds gone too. Smiling because this is what you wanted.

I won't tell him that in the time he was away I fell for someone else. I can't say that this someone made me fall crazy in love and I made him fall crazy in love back. It's just not meant for him to know that while he was away someone else was mine, and that I was for someone else. We'll never speak about how when we're together I just stare and think of that someone who broke my heart although you seem so perfect right in front of me. He'll never know how I really tried to forget that someone but his memory haunts me because he was so much a part of me.

It's too late for me to tell him I'm in love with someone else.

Each day that passes, I am more proud to be a woman.
I witness the sexism I face in the most basic of conversations but women I aspire to be more like motivate me, remind me
We hold so much power.
I may not have marched with Angela Davis or Audre Lorde,

But a girl asked if I thought she was pretty today.
As I applied man made make up to her face so maybe just maybe someone would notice her like I did,
I thought of how this response could change her outlook.
"Yes. Do you like your hair and make up?"
"Yes. Do you like it?"
"I think you're perfect."

See in that moment no man could tell me that it's easy being a woman or that I'm too uptight or take my job too seriously because these girls look up to me. Knocking on my door for whatever reason because they trust me. They listen when I'm stern and embrace my humor. As a woman I am able to tell girls they are beautiful as they look at me as inspiration. Moments like this I am Audre or Angela simply because I am making a difference, shaping young women. I hold so much power.

It's very possible that situations can embody a person. Drown them in their glory. It is just as possible I am jealous, jealous that you are so certain and continue to play a role as someone I do not know. It is very possible a slight crush has risen just because you're always around. It is possible the timing is just odd because I just so happen to be available. It is possible you know I am vulnerable and will take advantage of the moments I pay you mind because you feel my eyes glued waiting. So it is possible you pick and choose what you say, who you say it to, and when you do so. It is possible this has become the new you.

He told me to come here
But how do I introduce myself
I'm a secret I can't say much
So he invited me just to
Talk to me across the room when no one is watching
He invited me so I could witness strangers try to get his attention and I could say nothing
I rsvp'd to a disaster
In a room full of people we're strangers
But he invited me here

In the bishops sermon he preached of inspiration in various things.
I found it in a Cali boy that was hesitant in loving me.
He taught me patience.
I taught him not to be afraid.
Inspired that even the girl that couldn't be tamed can find love with a straight and narrow.
And he can love her for all she's done
And she can love him for all he doesn't
*you don't need no one else

I've loved you since before I knew what love looked like. But I had faith God wouldn't bring you if I wasn't ready. So I've loved you ever since because God kept us in touch and when I asked you what your story was you let me in and every night you beared a new piece. I've loved you since our intimacy was merely behind a screen and before we both knew what chemistry could grow to be. Ive loved you since you taught me how to be bare, fully clothed and still naked from all the things I thought I needed to be to be loved. When all along I just needed you.