“Love is a child with a gun in her hand.”

I don’t know how else to say it. I will love you for the rest of my life.

Of all the people I’ve been the man you loved is the only one I miss.

Maybe letting go isn’t all that different to loving you.

I swear my bones can feel it whenever you speak my name.

What a gentle curse: to still want you after all we’ve been.

She spoke with so much hope, the future dancing on her lips like a flame.

Her smile is an open flame and I have a paper heart.

It was always you who felt like water when my whole body was a flame.

Just because the pain is comfortable doesn’t mean you have to wear it.

Some days survival is all the living I can do.

There’s a weight to it, this missing you.

Her heart is heavy and ruined with hope.

Maybe I hold onto pain because I don’t know who I am without it.

I cannot lose you quietly. It will take blood and bone to pull you from my chest.

Even heartbreak can find a way to feel like home.

We built futures I’ll never get to visit. But I still have to watch them crumble.

A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi… has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It’s not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for.

When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles ’em.

My look and my character come from my experiences as a child. I wasn’t allowed to have girl toys, and I grew up poor. I also had a rough relationship with my stepdad.

Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re not attracting attention with it.

I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace.

I would like to see every woman know how to handle guns as naturally as they know how to handle babies.

When I sit near the ocean in the morning and write my verses and breathe the salty wind which is coming from the water, I rejoice in God and I am blissful, as I was as a child.

You know, I’ve held women and babies and jewels and money, but nothing will ever feel as good as holding that Cup.