DISAPPEAR HERE

You made the nomad in me build a house and stay.

I’m sorry that you were not truly loved and that it made you cruel.

Our Men do not belong to us. Even my own father, left one afternoon, is not mine. My brother is in prison, is not mine. My uncles, they go back home and they are shot in the head, are not mine. My cousins, stabbed in the streets for being too or not enough, are not mine. Then the men we try to love say we carry too much loss, wear too much black, are too heavy to be around, much too sad to love. Then they leave, and we mourn them too. Is that what we’re here for To sit at kitchen tables, counting on our fingers the ones who died, those who left, and the others who were taken by the police, or by drugs, or by illness or by other women? It makes no sense. Look at your skin, her mouth, these lips, those eyes, my God, listen to that laugh. The only darkness we should allow into our lives is the night, for even then, we have the moon.

i give myself five days to forget you. on the first i rust. on the second i wilt. on the third i sit with friends but i think about your tongue. i clean my room on the fourth day. i clean my body on the fourth day. i try to replace your scent on the fourth day. the fifth day, i adorn myself like the mouth of an inmate. a wedding singer dressed in borrowed gold. the midas of cheap metal. tinsel in the middle of summer. crevice glitter, two days after the party. i glow the way unwanted things do, a neon sign that reads; come, i still taste like someone else’s mouth.

At the end of the day, it isn’t where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I’m going and never have been before.

His eyes were the same color as the sea in a postcard someone sends you when they love you, but not enough to stay.

I’m not sad, but the boys who are looking for sad girls always find me. I’m not a girl anymore and I’m not sad anymore. You want me to be a tragic backdrop so that you can appear to be illuminated, so that people can say ‘Wow, isn’t he so terribly brave to love a girl who is so obviously sad?’ You think I’ll be the dark sky so you can be the star? I’ll swallow you whole.

You can’t make homes out of human beings, someone should have already told you that.