It’s 1998 I am a boy with le ann rhymes singing between my toes
Trembling in front of the girl I nicknamed beauty, I can’t breathe.
It’s 1995, I am Oklahoma. The cool kids plant bombs when they don’t see me interact with girls
The art of drowning is half-ridden behind my bad ear when they call me faggot
I wonder if I am capable of loving girls or if they’ll continue crumbling in my hands
It’s yesterday, I realize the glass torch from bones only exist if I let it
For the first time I try to breathe
It’s now, a river touches my hand, Chicago is burning
It’s 1994, I am a boy set aflame, attacked for the Nancy Kerrigan in my walk
The small plane crashing into the White House behind my eyes, the Forrest Gump in my voice
The way I held Philadelphia as if she were about to crumble
It’s now, this girl calls me cute, but I have only ever been ugly
It’s 1991, I am a brown boy in a white school, being harassed with a flag, and the sand, and the tan I have burned into my skin.
They have nicknamed me Rodney
It’s now, we both want silk and forever
But it’s 2005, I am New Orleans lying naked on my back listening to my first lover Katrina whisper
“You are only here for the wet of me, nobody will ever love you like this”
It’s now, this woman tells me she wants to be my wife
But it’s 1991, my mother places a knife in my hands and tells me to cast it in her
Like the smart bombs and the war on T.V.
It 1989, I am called the death of Anthony Sears by my aunts and cousins
It’s 1991, my mother has nicknamed me Dahmer, my mother is crumbling.
It’s now, this woman tells me she wants to be my wife, but all I can see, is her crumbling.