To say that I love ‘love’ would probably be akin to me saying that I am quite fond of inhaling oxygen. Love is the prism through which I view the world. I truly believe it binds and propels us. This isn’t a naive denial of the darkness that we know exists in the world, rather it is a refusal to allow the devastation, the horror or the heartache to consume us. It is affirming the knowledge that there is light. Love is that light. Romance sweetens the casual bitterness we can encounter; it heightens the mundane and makes the terrestrial supernatural. The time it takes for two pairs of lips to meet could be milliseconds, but it can feel as if time has stretched indefinitely; you are transposed into a different world, your own world; just for you and the one who holds your affection. It makes you uniquely aware of both your body and spirit, it grounds you and it raises you up. Love enriches the world we inhabit.”

“I know exactly who you are,
Delphine
You’re the one for me,
Delphine”

“Ọṣun knew that she was all Ṣàngó ever “wanted and more. She knew it was the More that terrified him. The surplus taunted him. She knew that sometimes having everything you desire can make you question your own worthiness. Ṣàngó didn’t like the taste of his own insecurities. ”

“When I say shortly, I mean my stomach hadn’t untwisted itself yet and the branding of his lips on my body could still be traced. Shortly, like I could still run my fingers across my skin and they would dip into the indents his fingertips had left. I would put my hands on my hips and my fingers would slip into the shape of his. The spaces where he had been were still warm.”

“I’m not very good with on-the-spot motivational speech,” I say to her. “Sometimes at night, I’ll rewrite conversations I had during the day, but I’ll change them up to reflect everything I wish I could have said in the moment. So I just want you to know that tonight when I write this conversation down on paper, I’ll say something really heroic and it’ll make you feel really good about your life.”

“Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you’ve been ruined.”

“ On his side, his arm a pillow, he looks more lost in thought than in sleep.”

“I felt this sudden surge of tenderness for him right then, a feeling so rare in me back then it felt like I was being displaced by it. Until Trevor pulled me back.
“Hey,” he said, half-asleep, “what were you before you met me?”
“I think I was drowning.”
A pause.
“And what are you now?” he whispered, sinking.
I thought for a second. “Water.”

“Fuck off.” He punched me on the arm. “And go to sleep, Little Dog.” Then he grew quiet.
Then his eyelashes. You could hear them think.

”

I went home and went to sleep. Outside of the occasional irritation, I had no nightmares, no passions, no desire, no great pains.

But let me be unseen.

"But when we sit together, close,' said Bernard, we melt
into each other with phrases. We are edged with mist. We
make an unsubstantial territory.'

“When you’re sad you need to hear your sorrow structured into sound.”

“What were we, that they could know us so quickly and so well?”

“It must eat you alive, not knowing. Not knowing who, not knowing how, not knowing why.”

“The worst is at night, when she presses against my skin from the inside and the pain is unbearable. We whisper together, I’m sorry, Mom. This is all my fault.”

I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how
Ignorant I was.

What, did you forget I was going to grow up

poetry is not a pipe