(for my slave ancestry)

Shroud don’t say anything if I changed
my hair, if I spoke my thoughts, don’t
move an inch, a muscle. There’s a knot
in your throat. It is just a moment in the
falling light. Kissing the velvet of your
shoulder. Stay, stay with me, hold me if
you dare. Truth matters to me. Leave me
another day. Love me another day. I know
you still need to heal. The temptation
to kiss you, to hold you is so strong, love.
I think of the unbearable loneliness into
the early hours of the morning. Stay with
me, dark is the night, the shapes crying
in the rain that go together. At the end of
the day I am tired, the love is gone, the
love is there. Everyone that I love, leaves
me, and in return I leave them in the heat
and the dust, the rust moth, India, the ex-
waves lapping at the shore. You’re my life-
line, and I’ll be forever writing love poems
to reach you. If only R. could look at me
that way again, instead of as if I came from

   another planet from outer space. Men,
the older male in particular expects sex, and
women expect nothing but love in return. Sins
are found in winter like books, the curator
of a museum writing his report. Nobody
calls Petrovna on the telephone. Asks her
out on dates. Her ex is in love, a perfect
love, and she gives him tenderness, and a
romantic love, her lips softly chant sweet
nothings when they make love, her physical
body is just as enchanting, his high euphoric.
All in love, but nobody loves me, all I keep
finding is wild onions forever not yours.
You are an angel R. You look angelic like a
groom, still as handsome as life, as breath,
as a wild Saturday. He sings, he trusts, he speaks
French while I shy away for an autumn,
while I’m forever not his, forever not yours.

           And I’m battling to survive between
anxiety, and fear of the unknown, the elite
white bikini-pressures of summer, talking
away. R.’s aura is a palace filled with longing,
and belonging, graceful silence. Beneath it
all I’m sad, underneath it all I feel shame.
And the field is divided between what R. shall
sew, and what he will reap. The music is so
sad that it touches my soul. I’m battling mountains,
hiking, climbing through the greenness of
valleys. R.’s lover is velvet, like a Wednesday evening
sweeter than any wine, swimming for survival

    and I’m slipping away tonight. Dawn breaks,
like touch, like a river, like the sleeping sea.