#no edges

They tried to draw me in lines straight ones, mostly clean and easy to understand like love was a hallway with only two doors

I kept opening windows

I don't fall for bodies the way they expect not shapes not categories not the names people cling to like instructions

I fall for gravity

For the way someone's mind pulls me in slow the way a voice can feel like home before I even know the address the way a soul can hum at the same frequency as mine

Call it confusing if you need to call it greedy indecisive too much

But I've never felt more certain than when I stopped choosing from the options I was given

Love isn't a box I check it's a current and I am done pretending I can only flow one way

I have loved softness and I have loved fire I have loved people who don't fit into your language and people who do but still surprise me

There are no edges here no borders to defend

Just connection raw and untranslatable spanning everything you tried to divide

And maybe that scares you this refusal to simplify

But I am not complicated

Books of 2023. THAT WE MAY LIVE and NO EDGES from Two Lines Press.

NO EDGES came in my Migrations subscription box earlier this year, and I finally got around to reading it this week! It's a collection of Swahili fiction translated to English. I love little multi-author anthologies because it's the perfect amount of taste testing without committing. My favorites were A Neighbor's Pot by Lusajo Mwaikenda Israel and the excerpt from Nakuruto by Clara Momanyi.