You ever met someone? Someone you thought was amazing, you thought they could be- they might be the closest thing to a great fit and they turned out to be human? They turned out to have flaws, they turned out to be complicated, not just complex, they turned out to have secrets and be cautious? They turned out to be just what you’ve seen before but connected to a human who seemed….. Someone who seemed to be the person you would try again with? The one you’d give the second chance to? But they were human, and you didn’t think that was possible?

I’ve gotten caught up trying to grow myself, trying to perfect my independence and self love and so quickly my romanticism caught me from behind, so quickly I fell into another what if. So quickly my imagination mangled my perception of reality. So quickly… it’s amazing to think how strong a characteristic of yourself could be… in this case being a hopeless (foolish?) romantic.

He’s a floating butterfly to me. He is a whisp of lavender in a summer breeze. And I see his taste for freedom.

It seems insatiable. But he also always seems so full- full of freedom, full of love, full of optimism… Full of happiness.

He is sincerely content, and he aims to be full, and so his stomach stretches and his limbs lengthen and he continues to grow. Every moment giving himself a new limit to surpass. He flies with freshly matured wings and he navigates the seas with gills no other human could fathom functioning with. 

He is my role model for how to let go. He is my role model for how to dust off the dirt and move on. He is an example problem, and he is the formula for at least several of my problems. He is humble and braggadocious. He is mutable and stern. He is welcoming of the vanguard, of contemporary, of new, and of making improvements. 

He is distant, and always near. When he is present he is unequivocally grand. He is his own pea in a pod, and I am a farmer trying to pluck his mind at the right moment. To witness. And yes, It is amazing to witness, especially to something/someone as stubborn as me. 

Thank you for blowing with the wind around me. 

Sincerely,

Black Boys

I cry on command when I have the chance. Whenever I have an hour or so to breakdown and build myself up again. I never got the chance to hurt when I wanted to. But I also never give anyone the chance to either. We command the other to articulate our most painfully anchored emotions whenever the second party is ready. And if we’re not ready-  we never articulate them.

My number one desire is to cry with someone.

He looked into his flat beige walls. The moonlight shimmering parting his blinds, gently illuminating portions of the speckled particles-dirt on the hardwood floor. The stove top light crept through the cracks of his bedroom door just slightly opened as if he was a child trying to catch a peak of his mother walking into the kitchen for a late night snack. He faced inward toward his closet, head laying parallel to the door knob. He only envisioned streamers plastering themselves across the bare glossed plastered walls. He saw the sentiments of his loved ones and his responses to questions of concern dancing corner to corner, as if following ribbons. They flew in the crisp fall breeze he’d marched through earlier that night.

I think I am so lucky to feel. I am so lucky to not have detached myself from my natural form. My state of sensation. My ability to hear see taste touch and experience love, joy and pain. And disgust, and hopelessness and sorrow, and empowerment and courage. I am so grateful to feel, and release, and have the ability to release these “things.” Forever the emotions presented by my humanity humble and enlighten and warm my soul. Even when they are bleak. I cherish them. 

They lead you to exchange, to action, to conversation... Let them lead you toward those states. 

I don’t know what is to be looked at as whole and full. I don’t know what it means to be fully human. I am not aware, allowed to be aware of what it means to be free. To be able to experience simple humanity. I am not present in every part of my true existence. I check each aspect of my compartmentalized self, one at a time, day after day- to sew myself up, to patch my existence together: firstly for my survival, and secondly for your comfort-

I am made aware of my dehumanization on every level of my consciousness, in my dreams, in my classrooms, in my car. your consciousness, in your dreams, in your classrooms, in your car. Every time my heart takes a beat I am vibrantly pulsed with the blessing you’ve given me to breathe. Yet, My heart still being called inhuman-

Each speckle of reclamation, I take back from this “nonexistence,” each thought I claim as mine and not yours. I cherish and I try to swallow as your decimation swarmed my ancestors. I reclaim the names you erased, and I proclaim to feel their loss when one day you acknowledge it as if it is fresh and new. I decide to hold onto their my pain. Our existence is not to be desecrated. It is to be understood and to remain and to be reclaimed for you and for us. It is to be fully loved.

Frankly. 

This is necessary. 

This is rare.                                       But this is absolutely imperative for life. 

This characteristic is what makes men great. 

And its lack makes men meek. 

It is so simple.                                            But so is something to everyone. 

It is so innate.                                             But so is something to everyone. 

To speak, to jump, to act, to fly, to breathe, to show yourself who you actually are. 

And show anyone else who you actually are.                                   Courage. 

To over complicate what is transparent- The ability to do something that frightens one. 

A noun. 

An adjective.

He is so, 

That was so,

It is so,

courageous. 

Frankly. It is clear that this is an, overwhelming ask. 

Clear that it is, and forever more will be,                                              asked.

This is what it is. 

Here is my courage.