“You can’t spell violence
without love,”
he told me once,
and I believed him.
I loved myself
black and blue
alone in a room
for years,
alone in the basement
of my body,
compartmentalized,
separate,
discrete.

“You can’t spell union
without no,”
I tell her now,
and she listens.
She loves me
brown and green
all the filth that I am,
all the garden manure
and kitchen refuse
of my mind,
composting,
becoming,
continuous.

I long for the day
where we get to play in the dirt
muddy hands spreading ground
all over each others faces,
the fluid nature of our bodies
practicing joy without it feeling
like work
(at last).
At last, I laugh
into your mouth,
gaping smile uncontrolled
head thrown back in mirth
and the taste of your breath
like soil.
Kiss me, kiss me,
bite me, eat me,
toss me to the floor
to swallow me whole,
childlike with wonder in the present
at last.

Nostalgia like your body remembering
the sensations of cherry blossoms in April,
of the summer sounds,
cicadas and heavy breathing
on humid nights.
Even my sweat will remember
what making True, Pure Love feels like.

After all the anger and sorrow melt away
like sullied snow,
the crocus poke through like laughter
floating on the wind.
You were the pollen coating everything.
I was all four seasons all at once.
You were the second rain that settled
into my cracked skin
and reminded me how to drink.

What is it that I miss most about the South?
Going down on each other in the woods.
Sitting in silence on fallen logs
in a knowing sort of way.
My first sunburn in the Outer Banks
and making love in the sand,
dancing and leaping naked under the full moon.
The River as heaven, wading in
to the frigid and sparkling source
of the water we were both made of.

You taught me I needed to grow.
You taught me I could leave.
Love never, ever dies
but on these cold, California nights,
I miss bathing in your Light.

Chad and Garrett
tell me the trees don’t speak,
that I’m in psychosis
when I see the wind spirits.
Silently, I count frog bodies
in a dried up stream bed
and wonder if they’re right.
After all, I didn’t grow up
in the mountains of my
grandparents.
I’m afraid of mud
because it will stain my skin,
because it’s soft and wet and
too alive, like me.
I sample it and confirm there
are indeed, not enough of the
correct microbes present.
Did they, too, get sick of the
gloved hands fondling them
and go start their own commune?
Every meeting I walk into,
I count the melanated faces.
I can’t help it, I was
only taught to survey us.
No one questions asphalt
or glass windows;
these post-post-colonial explorers
merely desire the wealth
of Mother’s bleeding heart.
There is something very
rape-y about planting a flag
into the ground without its consent.
They say the extinction is coming,
and by now I’m too
exhausted to care.

part 1: sea level rise
There are pieces of my Heart
scattered around the world,
wandering coastlines and
trying to find their way home.

Rather than building a seawall,
I opened the floodgates.
I watched my levees Surrender
to a foaming, frothing Force.

Come, little refugees, little shards
of remnant Loves,
return to the chest in which
I kept you for so long as bait:
swimming in circles,
breathless and blind.

Make me Whole again, for yes,
I am broken.
Yes, I am drowning
and I need You.
I am calling back all my heart parts now.

part 2: desertification
“You’re not broken,” is a lie.
Explain why my limbs don’t work, then.
Explain these sutured scars
and why I can’t sleep
or eat or sex like an
unbroken animal would.

These cracks aren’t painted gold,
but if you peer in you’ll see
flowing lava.
Stare into my core if you want to
join my nightmares of war.

If you’ve never been violated,
you can’t understand.
I’m not pottery,
you’re no kiln.
This parched, scorched self
isn’t art.

what’s churning inside of me is
the heating seas,
is a tornurricanefire.
churn as in making butter
from cream,
solidifying separating.
it’s the land i want to run from this time,
because it’s the Land i know
i need to Love.
Love as in tiny, tiny
movements of dirt
and dance as prayer.
Love as in accepting thorns in my soles,
rocks and fruit sullying my feet,
and remaining unafraid of blood.

i smell gardens full of roses,
bending and snapping
and nearly passing out each time
as my heart can’t keep up
with my desire for beauty.
no one warned me i’d want to thrive
during the apocalypse.
i was only told grief comes in waves
so on the days i feel like collapsing,
i know i’m doing just fine.
on the days i get to dance,
i know we are going to win the war
we never agreed to fight.

I receive direction:
Channel Love.
Speak again, but softly this time.
It’s okay to be tender like the valves of a heart
that used to hurt incessant.
It’s all okay now.
Safety is an illusion, I am told,
and finally it all makes sense:
there is only one Home and I am It.
There are bricks for throwing through glass,
shattered windows abound in potholed neighborhoods.
But in the privatized ghettos,
Love stays being remembered.
The ache of hunger
twangs like an instrument, playing a tune that
I feel vibrating my nerves.
They simmer down sooner, now,
and I am calm for the first time in my life.
This is what I hear:
Channel conscientiously this time.
Speak only what is True
and very little else.
Speak it with a smile and a kiss on the cheek.
Embrace this new solitary hope,
stand up right and call yourself home.

Though he bought her better butter,
her batterer was bitter.
She said, “Maybe if I’m better,
then my batterer won’t be bitter.
If my batterer feels better
then maybe he won’t batter.”
So she made her batterer
feel better but still he chose to batter.
Battered, she was bitter and just
wanted to be better
so she bought a bat and beat him dead
and her batterer could not beat her.
So, even if a bit of better butter would
have tasted better,
it was better to be free than live
better battered.

Please unmute your self!
We can’t hear you.
Speak up.

Can you hear me?
Can you hear me now?
I’m speaking but the connection is bad.

Try leaving and coming back.
The problem is on your end, not mine.
I can hear you but can you hear me?

Unmute yourself!
No, no – too much background noise.
There’s a lag. There’s an echo.
Mute yourself.

Don’t interrupt me while I’m talking.
But I’m not going to stop until interrupted.
The mic is mine but you can scribble something in the chat
and maybe it’ll be read
if there’s time.

Nevermind! Time’s up.
The host has ended this meeting.
Maybe next time you’ll be heard.