while craving love, I
hold myself tight from loving
longing beats hurting

At 2, I arrived in America.

Sometime, through my mother, I learned to create. I also hula-hooped, with basketball breaks.

At 9, a boy took a metal baseball bat to my head after I beat his brother in a game of kickball. I may’ve been wearing a dress.

I was 10 the first time I remember someone trying to convert me to Christianity. I never made it to her church.

I haven’t seen my mother since I was 11. The night before she left I started bleeding.

At 13, I lost faith in purity.

At 15, fearing my own sexuality, I called my sister a dyke.

At 16, I killed a snake and didn’t feel remorse.

Somewhere I misplaced the language of my birth.

At 17, I kissed a girl.

At some point, but not for that reason, I wanted to die.

At 18, 19, 20, 21, I was told I was “really nice for a black girl,” “really smart for a black girl,” “too smart for a black girl.”

In the middle of that, I got married.

At 23, I adopted a 13-year-old cat named Iris. I renamed her Sara. Sara preferred Iris. She died two years later.

Before 24, I was no longer married.

Somewhere, I relearned to say “yalla, y’all.”

Before 25, a chronic disease exposed itself.

Along the way, I kissed some boys, too.

By 26, I couldn’t define home, or myself. I know that I am more than my parts. I am more than my past or my future but I must know them. I must know my privilege, be aware of it, beware of its showing itself or its expectations.

To this day, I’m trying to perfect a hummus recipe.

(This was scribbled on the subway today. If you desire elaboration, please ask.)

we grow through healing,
through braving our purity,
but we do not break

I’m done with speaking
what is heard in my silence
is my weeping heart

accept rejection
like you think it’s a blessing
but not in disguise

promises unkempt
bygones of a bitter past
easily displaced

through intricate hums
your grief registers across
the subway aisle

the open shadows
of love’s broken melodies
snap back to nothing

once suns have fallen
sparrows and I soon spiral
into lost oceans

back roads in small towns
where crops and ancestors
wave back all-knowing

mississippi tries
and succeeds but perceptions
don’t fall (in vacuums)

our bullied children
with their growing hearts breaking
love them unending

footsteps in darkness
some things you hear, never see
like “I love you too”

dating in New York
adventures of bi sorts
disconnected want

words incompletely
translate this wanting my all
demands of your sum

letterpress my spine
read between my proofed pages
translation: have me

your catcalls will not
reduce me to submission
I’m more than my ass

loneliness is a
sign of misspent alonedom
love your pure purpose

So that was fun. I’ll keep writing, maybe not daily but definitely. Toward the middle of the month I started to think in haiku. In fact, I started a haiku in which the first line was “I think in haiku” but I abandoned the idea because I think it’s silly, not the desired kind right now.

After a while, I started to notice that I was writing on the same themes and using many of the same words: lost/forgotten, silence/speaking/hearing, alonedom, broken/breaking, heart(s), breath(ing), connectedness. But I tried to not let that stop me or become too aware of the fact that I was “writing haiku.”

I don’t know how I feel about the quality of anything I wrote. There were many “why did I write that?” reactions. But I wasn’t exactly writing for quality, which may not be a good thing. I was writing because I hadn’t been writing and I felt that void.

Void-feeling is not recommended.

we met in a web
let each other in to caves
once too big for one

I seek sacred earth
religiously only to
find it surrounds me

don’t parts of you die
when, as a joke, you say to
someone “kill yourself”?

the sound of muting,
of witnessing speech give in,
of never knowing

marriage of trying
but there is no we in us
only podless peas

we avoid gazes
as if to save our souls from
sudden extraction

spectacles of hope
are hardly invitations
for your sympathy