“I should tell you a few truths— we had been drinking, we had synthesized what other black inks we’d etch onto our skins, we were saying, “​protect your magic,” ​ or other things about healing and bodies. We were scantily-clad, bikini tops for shirts, and reeking of a freedom fruit that spoils only in black girl pH.” 

“You should’ve seen me—my smooth white hips, / the way they slung cold around powder-slick metal, /  the way I whispered Hey there honey, you look so sad in the ears of men waxed with whiskey /  and a taste for mink and plaster.

“My girlfriend Sasha has been fired from her temp job for pressing her boobs against a glass conference room wall, 26 floors up. Our heater is broken, and so is our oven.”

“Back when she and I shared a body, I thought too much about all the things that could go wrong: an infection, a genetic mutation, a single cell dividing abnormally. I exercised, meditated, gave up coffee and took my vitamins, knowing that whatever was happening inside of me, inside of her, was largely beyond our control. At every doctor’s appointment, I braced for bad news. Thankfully, luckily, none came. “

“An enactment of the truth, proof that our skin will always revolt in such a way? Black girls, black women, are there, in those six seconds, silent, waiting, invisibly unleashed, always present and living, fighting to be alive.“

“The Robitussin takes a really long time to kick in so I am sober for an entire sermon. I keep waiting for some sort of interesting visual or sensory hallucination but there is just this guy with an acoustic guitar praising Jesus, and my girlfriend who is waiting until marriage to have sex. “

“At the top, you brace yourself against the pitch as your father clambers up the sloped roof to the hatch. A hot wind rakes the top of the cornfields. From here you can see all the way to Marysville.”

“I imagine the nudists rising / early to eat cheese, drinkcafé au lait, before / heading”

“To learn beauty through the lack is how music unwinds its throttle. You must be quiet in its breathing, little avalanche. You are secondary. Every knot in a series must say this to its neighbor. If you listen closely, lace sounds like a pack of firecrackers wishing in little blasts.”