When flowers faded,
I returned home
I wrapped myself
In the bittersweet world

To belong is to be safe
appreciated and welcomed
for just being yourself
and not having to change
for anybody

I’ve seen love. Imagined her,
as the breeze of my own fantasies.
It was more than an emotion.
When I feel the flowers wilt,
I turn to daydreams for water.

I’ve seen grace,
a glimpse of another half
never seen but always heard.

“I ask myself

Does home include grief?

Has grief made a home in me?”

“For us right here, nothing is impossible.

Impossible is nothing.

I close my eyes.

I imagine I was in the middle

Of space with the stars, reading.”

“…and still I cling on to my frayed cross
in hopes of guidance
in hopes that walking amongst
the aftermath of colonization
has a purpose…”

…Space in the room filled with laughter
Stepping into a new chapter
We write our stories
But live our dreams…

As if my whole body is just surface.
As if I could peel away my skin,
as if I could strip away,
as if removing parts would somehow
make me into who I was always meant to be

plane takeoff
11:15 am
washington, dc, dulles airport

5000 feet above the ground
steadily climbing
i think about the idea of flight
how poetic it is to defy gravity

Dear Oakland,
last night I got off a plane
rolled my neck
felt it crack
and said,
Honey,
I’m home

My grandmother

at five feet, skin like the back of a leather belt, heart like infinity

was a church

And by church I mean a holy sanctuary

I mean

Let me tell you about my grandmother

Let’s talk about black girls.

You know those angry girls?

Them loud girls.

Don’t forget they’re ratchet.

And oh my god their hair!

you've got more menace on your mind

than what reads on the fine print.

searching children you classify

as malicious maniacs,

first and foremost before you ask their name.

I'm naked

you can see every ridged dent in my thighs

dark blue veins slither slowly like snakes beneath milk

white translucent rivers

my belly

I'm naked

this is a poem for the girls and boys

who believe they deserve to be lonely:

you are a hospital where every surgery

ends with lonely voices calling out "time

of death" into tired rooms. you are a

barren field littered with landmines. you

Restlessly propelled bus tour through poverty's playpen

Inhaling the vile stench of minimum wage and food-stamps

An unholy concoction

of $8/hr in a $960 cramped studio apartment

fed by cal fresh's moldy

government cheese

you had big hands

big hands that draped over mine and wrapped around my hips

and fingertips rough and callused tracing ribcages

you were a man. not a boy but a man

Like wind caressing wayward leaves, he grasps my hands

fearful of letting them return to the earth.

At minimum, my boyfriend

must remind me once every two weeks

that I can't make love to him buried beneath flowerbeds