“I remember when I was the only sin you liked to kiss.”

I like to trace the ghosts of your fingers on the back of my hand. They read- I don’t know how to hold without you.

I pocket grief and it beckons me like a lover.

My silhouette is an ocean, your lips a sailor.

There is a calmness in not knowing.

Every beauty mark, a country to roam. Every stretch mark, a river to cross.

I loved you in quiet because to hide is to pretend that it is okay.

Allow me to introduce myself, A warning and a welcoming all at once.

We are so much more than skin can hold.

When I look in the mirror, I don’t see a poem.

I have lived too many lives to be only one thing, and instead of attempting to mesh them into a form of a human being, I have decided to love every jagged edge of mine.

I don’t like how your embrace feels like comfort till the knife thrust.

I always wanted to be more than my brown skin, when you told me I was sweet like cinnamon.

If you wish to read the story of my people look no further than my body.

I am only beautiful when my legs are open and I have forgotten my mother tongue to make room for yours.

Love transcends oceans and I love you in every country we are both made of.

I love you the way rain falls on a sunny day- a kind of marvelous sadness.

I have never seen a wrestling match or a prize fight, and I don’t want to. When I find out a man is interested in these sports, I drop him.

For you know only a heap of broken images

Love lifts us high, higher than we ever dreamed. And the higher you go, the higher the fall when it’s over.

Half of me is missing and what’s left is missing you.

One day I will cease to exist. But all my life I will love you.

Day after day, the echoes of losing you resonate in my bones.

It hurts that I was just one page in the book of your life. But what hurts more is knowing you’ll revise that chapter someday, and you’ll erase me completely.

But if we could have been together, what would there be to dream of?