“I loved each and every one of your faces.”

This brown body is not an explosion- it is light and honey.

Your heartbeat is a holy thing.

How do you mourn the loss of someone who was never yours to begin with?

I want to be something to pray for but I don’t know how to be.

And what am I but the smallest of footnotes in the universe’s everlasting memoir?

This country collects too many tongues, until our only language is silence.

I don’t know how to let you out without destroying us both.

Seek refuge in the space between my bones.

Somewhere inside my throat lives your ache.

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.

At some point, everyone faces the same challenge on the journey of self-improvement: you have to fall in love with boredom.

Let a series of happy thoughts run through your mind. They will show on your face.

From silly devotions and from sour-faced saints, good Lord, deliver us.

There’s more to life than cheek bones.

What is it you want to change? Your hair, your face, your body? Why? For God is in love with all those things and he might weep when they are gone.

Our world faces a true planetary emergency. I know the phrase sounds shrill, and I know it’s a challenge to the moral imagination.

The fears we don’t face become our limits.

The secret is to moisturize the face. I’ve been doing that since I was 17 years old. (on looking young)