radial blooming -

Last night I did something that when initially envisioned, scared the living shit out of me. And I did it with grace, ease and zeal and authenticity. No one tells you how scary it is to share your truth, your journey and the path with which you have walked.

Sure it’s easy to elucidate emotional realities through art - it’s what my life’s passion is. To capture the singular effect that is “anger” or “joy” or “passion”. It’s easy. But baring yourself - like unhinging your ribs apart and letting yourself bleed all over the furniture. It sounds poetic and is. But you live it and part of it stings. Burns up your core and incinerates the lies you tell yourself to keep yourself subtle, sane and small.

Honesty is beautiful. It’s real. Visceral, a word I use often and alive. The exaltation is not without work. In other words, you don’t get to make it to the top of the mountain without getting scraped. And maybe this journey will pick at old scabs and tender, blue bruises that never fully healed. We climb, anyways.

There’s a reason why intrepidness isn’t just a brand, but a way of life. It’s more than just a title, it is my swan song. The tune I sing as I climb the ladder of Being. And last night, smiling and laughing among friends, it dawned on me that the view from the mountain top is without a doubt, worth the climb to get here.

‪dream Big, let the atmosphere take you to your nature.‬

nobody told me how intimate showering together could be.

september.

I been getting higher more, feeding myself in ways i never even thought i was hungry for. I have been speaking from the undercurrent of my soul more. Letting my eyes linger for longer and allowing myself to dip from spaces when I need to. Growing and being is clumsy and so raw. Something about the rush of blood to my head and hearing the sound of my own heart beat reveals currants of possibility to me. I am always talking about what could be which possibly makes me seem distant. but I revel, often at what we’re doing here. they don’t call it an orchestration for nothing and forgive me for being curt but ain’t we some fly ass mother fuckers? just out here, battling against the cries of apathy. being as much as we can be. it gladdens me. that is one of the ways i feed myself; residual joy; like spooning the last bit of honey into your cup before heading off to get more. i like to see a smile and crowds of em. i like to think that’s how we call this whole thing off - by just declaring ourselves enough right where we stand. no fanfare, just a harmony of sovereignty floating seventy thousand feet above the atmosphere. yeah, that’s how i picture it. me and you rolling into the sunset with our hearts upon our sleeves - with nowhere to go and yet, everything to be.

A momentary mingling.

I turn my head thinking the clock reads 7:77pm - a trick of the eye gate.The temperature sits comfortably at 77 degrees and the time actually reads 7:07. The wood grain of my old Toyota is scratched and worn and I start to recall every tick and nick on the body of this dashboard. I sway into nostalgia for a time not too long ago when the smile on my face was of a permanent hue at the thought of your name … it’s a wonder how a few words can make wild what was once tame. In my heart lives a tenderness for those I’ve loved true, names I’ve called while in this very car and the stories we’ve told each other. It’s quite a pain to miss what was so fresh and yet a clean slate was what was best. As my fingers trace my rose colored lighter, I wonder what causes the residue to stain the insides of a heart? In all it’s gold and emerald glory, what causes an uproaring of bad blood and an even worse attitude to tear away what is nourishing and holy? I’ll never ever understand. And as I sit, skin balmy under the humid moonlight I waft into another place: a silent innerstsnding, that what once will never be. but what is coming gallops to me, and in a greater form — you will never lose when you shine in the glory of all that you’ve been shown.

3:33am

Laying awake, I stare up into the popcorn ceiling as a red light hums quietly against the maroon colored walls. And in my throat lives a lump the size of my fist; it’s harder to swallow and my hands are glistening with sweat. And as I feel into the grooves of the mattress against my spine and the many pillows lining my body, a wonder brushes past my eyelids; as delicate as a betrodden exhale, the kind our bodies release at the embrace of our beloved. The ‘finally’ sigh. This brush of air breezes in language that speaks of a new chapter. It sweeps in with it a tiny little stirring and I pull the covers closer to me. Giddy and mixy and terribly afraid of what’s coming next. And as my jaw clenches tighter, I remember the many times my feet touched fertile soil. I recall how my soles become dampened by dewy blades of grass decorated with condensation from the night before. With this teensy breath, all of a sudden I feel weightlessness that carries me to a time were what was over the horizon did not scald the insides of these eyelids like this. Change can access a Nirvana when keyed into it right. Bliss, with calibrated vision. & I keep seeing the red light from the inside of my closed eyes. And my body suddenly gets heavier as sleep comes nearer. A needed relief or welcomed distraction; for a moment, when these heavier thoughts suspend I’ll find a smile or two lulling into a slumber to help me forget what I hate to remember.

Placed at my feet one evening were four marvelous flowers. Oozing of Amber and whiskey, these perfumes dripped onto my feet. I stared up with the question: were you all plucked straight from my imagination? It’s as if this flora was only created to spark awe; the 5th element. I wonder if the width of these smiles is a message for me to flaunt mine? I wonder if we’re sitting in the same soul, simply counting time.

Don’t break the spell.

ruby red.

you rouse me. whirling colors in a radial spiral, you beam in many different directions - I have always liked my men tall with a soul flattened in a Great surrender. performing a prophecy by how he walks, plummeting towards destiny. labored talks and a drawl that tells me time only escapes me when I let it. a lisp that sounds like the crackle you hear when the record scratches, signaling a classic. you are a classic. and I can’t find a sliver of will in me that wants to hold you down. instead, everything in me desires to uplift you. inspire you and raise your degree as it were decreed. just for a minute, if you’ll let me.

vocal chords.

tears of joy overflow and in my heart lives an echo I wish I could muffle. an echo so bright that it blinds me as I wake in the mornings. I send out letters into a doomed sea. and into that sea I throw these bottles filled with scrap papers, scribbled with prayers and hymnals from deep within the recess of my soul. and in these songs sit the hefty parts of me. parts that have never known softness and only sing jagged notes that cut up your kneecaps just from hearing them. songs sung purely out of hope, music born out of a desire. a desire that raged and rolled in me to be heard by The One I loved, most. The one with ears for my confessions. And hands for my innards. The one who lives gently placed over the space in my heart. The one who is closer to me than my own jugular. I vow forever to sing my tunes to you, as if this love in me is a well, never running dry.

how naive. 

did I know that one day, I would grow and that my enthusiasm would fade? The verses suddenly turned flat and I began singing in keys that were short, stifled and mingled with a scent of betrayal. my beloved lost the taste for my voice. I was sure of it and that rancid sea no longer flowed your love back to me. indeed it was doomed from the beginning, a whisper tells me. this sea, my letters and all the faith in the world could not convince me that the ocean was not swallowing up my insides. Becoming deaf to the tune of your love, I wanted to give up. Love like this is eternal and it will never fade. To the heart of a believer, this is an indisputable fact though all of me quaked with denial. 

My grandmother etched something into my soul when I was a child - that two steps towards the One warrants a love that rushes back, fifty-fold. 

And now the tears that stain my cheeks burn because I know You. I know where you reside and how deep in me you live. How you stretch over my body and call it Home. I know you so deeply that to house doubt would be a disservice to all the love you have revealed in me. tadakhar//maktuub … you were never silent from me but taught me what tune to listen for. refined my ear and showed me how frivolous love letters are when ultimately, you have never left me. you, as the everlasting breath in my body and me as the canvas with which you varnish - a love affair I would do nothing to rid myself of. 

I sing, again.

What am I grateful for? Who do I stain my face with age for? That furrowed brow for a past that can only be found tucked behind my forehead. I am thankful and it shows up in my walk. The way I sway in this endless swinging. I am thankful and it shows up in my laugh: is the last one I’ll ever have that hits this deep? I am thankful and it reveals itself in the tenderness of my touch. Yet my grip is so loose. I am thankful and it shows in my speech, stains my sheets and leaves a lipstick ring around a wine glass. gratitude, dripping, is what grounds me. So I sing a song only swans can sway to and I tip toe on this earth like she is a respite. I tread light.

almost.

our feet gave off heavenly hums of heat. holding hands, we swept up every bit of joy and named it after one another. you were my keepsake and me? your amulet. a couple of good luck charms in the flesh. and lord knows we refused to entertain coincidence. through us, we learned the weight of a hand in good faith. we taught each other to speak up straight, like God was listening. there was a bellow when we met. lightening striking a million wombs, I think we may have even frightened Karma. Or at least kept it at bay. the power of two hearts in an endless sway, making a new day, every day. we tasted freedom the same, music sat in our mouths identically. a twin to me. euphoria was the flavor of our nostalgia and we spun around for so long that we almost became timeless. we almost became perfect. squinting, we almost saw the lining, glistening in gold; dripping onto the mantle of our souls. 

Though doubt and I dance, all that is ever needed is a silence. Oftentimes it’s a deafening one. So that I may surrender, collapsing into a slow saunter. The gift of interior space morphed into exterior wonder; this, this is where I reside.

Texts I Never Sent.

‪When you hear the blue jays singing close to midnight won’t you think of me? In the thick of nostalgia somewhere halfway between your deepest desires and a quarter past 11, you start to feel a tugging at your heart. Hearing a call you cannot deny yet somehow are unable to answer. It all sinks into you. Suddenly seeing into a darkness which tunnels you right into my lap; your walk sings to me in its pace. I carve out a special place in my heart for the beating of yours and this is all to formulate language, saying: I am grateful to know you. I gladly follow the beat of your drum … do you hear how melodic we sound? How we sway and drip with hymns from our fingertips? Do you see how we are the color Gold, bottled up in flesh? There is no likeness like you and this makes me like you. There … I said it. I like you. ‬

Composed at 5:55am.

What is a breakdown without a breakthrough? Who would’ve thought that simultaneously as all fell apart and I took the last of my gasping breaths after all the crying that a piece of paradise was on the other side of utter hopelessness?

I feel as though life has taken a chisel to the hardened edges of my heart and given me an ultimatum. One where we promise each other things I would never dare repeat but I wonder — after the pinky swear was over — if there’s a place in our hearts that is opened when we find ourselves without someone who was once a dear companion?

Someone once said that a heart break and heart opening can be the same thing depending on who is listening.

One day in the near nowness, I will look back with wise and sweet fondness to connect dots I cannot see. Someday this will be an elegy; my own personal swan song and I’ll look back, held up by a strengthening nostalgia.

One day sooner, I will continue collecting gems on this path, looking up at a teal stained sky and I’ll wonder about the girl who cried wolf so much so, she became one.

1:11.

Delicate little balancing act - the facets of myself I adore so much against the expectations of a love. I can admit like any woman, having loved foolishly, that the former was sacrificed for the presence of the latter. it’s a reality, disjointed. And the tipping of the scales has come within the past few days - there has been the beloved shift. one I’ve known awaited me, but never had the brevity to summon forth. Choosy lover vibes like a mother fucker - here’s the thing … I just find myself navigating my own identity, creeping on 25 (whatever that means, cuz real niggas age backwards or whatever #foreveryoung) but it’s a calling I keep coming to I finally feel sound enough to declare it for myself. I want to unlock my own mind to the possibilities of what really is meant for my heart. I feel as though I have experienced relations on a level that I recognize was influenced by my own flux. And that’s something I relinquish with this decisiveness. I get it now and I really find this space to recognize this so beautiful. The ability to seek through myself and the love surrounding me that I really deserve so much better that I’ve been given. So I’ma be it, and accept nothing less. :)

Been at it with this undergrad thing for a while now. Damn near gave up completely, twice. Waxed and waned between aniexty and depression for 7 years because of it. But, I love my mom. And I am a first generation child of African immigrants, this education shit rly ain’t something I could bypass. So today I pick up my bookbag and start the first day of my actual-factual last semester of college. Good riddance, wish me luck! Xo

Isolation – Returning to the nothingness to feel the somethingness of living. It’s been so silent around me. In my head. My physical surroundings. Life has cleared. So many things flattened and subtracted to leave me to me. All my own. My own. It’s just hitting me how few and far between moments like this have been granted me. I say granted because in the fervor of loneliness, the deafening silence of neither being admired or admonished seems like a little gift. I am currently entirely unsure. Unbalanced. Stripped. Feeling raw. Hypersensitive. Kind of lonely, but experiencing a new sort of peace. For the first time … for the first time in my life I am left by my lonesome to sort through all of it … feeling up for the challenge.

God bless the men who have loved me well.

11:11.

Suffering from immense amounts of gratitude that cause you to swell & cry sitting on the toilet listening to a song that explains it all. I feel 12 again. I feel 50 again. This pendulum of life pierces through my heart every single day, but I’m starting to think these lightening bolts are simply reminders to me that I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive.