in child like sing song anthem i taunt myself 

i find a mirror and dance 

i write this for you 

from my imagination of yours and the me i cast in between 

we giggle and i red turn through a world parade — a rainbow color flag charade 

i wonder why i love in rounds 

why it so often takes two trials to adhere to that blue whisper 

that tug that just made the tension sweeter 

please don’t make those eyes, wide eyed, evil alien eye. please, 

let this break slow. 

i don’t want to fear this. i don’t want to fear this and what it does. let me stay honest. 

can you? can you be gentle with this material?

i guess this is me hoping you’ll be kind. me wishing you were. 

who is the serpent here? is she a guide? 

is it cute when i flirt about fiber? 

often I wish I had stayed a drummer. 

would i be more interested if we shared that too? 

do you like it when you see this reflection of you? 

is it narcissism? is it ego? that deep fatigue or a real need?

theres a vertigo i feel ween you cast us into impossible realities.

my gifts lie in the work of shadow

but im learning not to run away from the light, not to be afraid of feeling source

im trying to not always hide my dreams in dark night but i feel blinded by your burn. 

in my grief I couldn’t read his manipulation, what is it now I cant see in you?

we could have just been collaborators 

could have made new worlds with our words 

we didn’t have to fall in love, 

cast our poems in each others directions 

we could have just made money, traveled the world, and thrown a fucking good party

i didn’t have to try so hard to break you open, to make you soft, to make you something worthy of mine 

i didnt have to pour all that love and want into you. 

in the end, we retired the dream, we exhausted the flame. 

we became two dead-again stars, burning our wounds in a vast again void.

look at these hand full of stars. I am bursting in the spiral of light, a whirlpool of wild color. but when they ask I can hardly say but stammer. 

you see it too don’t you? 

every dream must recover itself in the world of the waking, will you help me remember the order of this mess, the colors of the fish? help me find the border between these scenes.

have i not already made all these seeds into flashing wonder? is that not what you saw? or did you miss it when i opened my eyes to show you?

micah asks if i had forgotten my potential 

i whisper after i hang up that i just wanted to rest 

i didn’t want to have to lead, have to intervene i wanted to receive, 

to be the guest 

in her love, i could coast.

is this all for more practice in grace, to remember actually, how much easier it is to forgive than it is to forget? 

why was it your eyes i landed on next? 

i remember how it was to look in his.

his moroccan hoods and green scattered flakes 

he seemed so small.

now he pushes billions in the name of war and i learn nightmares make for good theater.

i ponder maps of operations and mona asks, “how do you keep your heart open to love after disappointment?”

i think about that day in summer i came back to campus, the ride and the fall 

I remember how i weeped in san francisco, how you sat on the carpet and let me tell you about the brit in portugal 

i remember how you shed tears for the first time in the garden and promised you wanted to love me better

sending these pictures back and forth in in equal cadence — videos, emojis, playlists and  routes 

its hard to keep enough distance.

why does it feel so good to feel your tears and your tears? 

i crave the salt water kisses of a goodbye crush

why is the sex sweeter when it burns? kinder when its fleeting?

this bratty game of attraction,
will you leave if we say no?

the truth is i love like this because i have been hurt, 

heartbroken by that first love, that recursive, ouroboric birth. 

that poison love of shared cells. 

the inevitable microchimeric heartbreak of human divide, 

the way she pushed me out  — pushed and punched and battled me in that adoration of her own body made separate,

her own flesh in distorted, divergent mirror.

i love like this because i have been hurt and heartbroken and it all just makes me want to break open further.

to show you all my color and tangle it in yours.

I let love linger, let the want and wistful wonder continue because in the end, 

when i find myself holding the heartbreak, cradling the bits, laughing at the loudness, I try and remember what this is all for 

and the answer doesn’t come around pulling me back, away, towards or out, 

it leaves me here. 

makes me look more directly at myself in this mirror. 

makes me catch my own shape and stare into those eyes, 

i twist and reveal our edges, bend and see how it does not break 

I look at myself and see all the attempts, all the trials

it is this attempt, this trial that i do it for

and so i will continue, in this cycle and loop of looking into a strangers eyes and asking who are you in this iteration? 

and so i will continue, looking at you and saying “I love you, and I have so much to learn…..I love you, and how generous-how downright miraculous—-it is that life would let me learn like this.”*

*Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned