how the will to survive

outlasts the will to destroy.

i didn’t look in mirrors.

All our faults are fallen leaves.

Forgive where God will not.

We skinned the thing that killed you,

boiled its flesh for soup.

Once, I fell asleep in a fire.

No one shows you how to wear your blackness

No one gives you that armour

part threat, part dare.

Because learning flints

the sphere of ideals.

Rolling off my tongue, graceful like the currents of a spring freshet

December leaning into January

and the cold months that followed.

you looked skyward too

You stare at that scene--all sun, all joy…

Where do you feel safe bringing them? 

Where are they safe?

Because of him

you love when five-o-clock shadow

makes your lips tingle.

See, quills can be softened on the tongue.

Its alabaster palm will lean to sow

what words will wind within their binding strictures

There's enough Summer here
for a boy to play until
he can no longer see his hands.

little silhouettes
in Jesse’s ___________
small beings that are not
there 

Terrible things happen to good people

There are no answers beyond
what or why, nothing to ascertain.