yes, i too wish dude would stop

asking us about where we from

but on the other side of our side eyes

is maybe a hand where hands do no good

a look to say, yes, i know lately has been

a long time for your people too

& i’m sorry the world is so good at making

us feel like we have to fight for space

to fight for our lives

“solidarity” is a word, a lot of people say it

i’m not sure what it means in the flesh

i know i love & have cried for my friends

their browns a different brown than mine

i’ve danced their dances when taught

& tasted how their mothers miracle the rice

different than mine. i know sometimes

i can’t see beyond my own pain, past black

& white, how bullets love any flesh.

i know it’s foolish to compare.

what advice do the drowned have for the burned?

what gossip is there between the hanged & the buried?

& i want to reach across our great distance

that is sometimes an ocean & sometimes centimeters

& say, look. your people, my people, all that has happened

to us & still make love under rusted moons, still pull

children from the mothers & name them

still teach them to dance & your pain is not mine

& is no less & is mine & i pray to my god your god

blesses you with mercy & i have tasted your food & understand

how it is a good home & i don’t know your language

but i understand your songs & i cried when they came

for your uncles & when you buried your niece

i wanted the world to burn in the child’s brief memory

& still, still, still, still, still, still, still, still, still

& i have stood by you in the soft shawl of morning

waiting & breathing & waiting

i didn’t like you when i met you

but like the funk of a dude unwashed & sun-whooped

i learned the need. & like dude, you were stank & i

was stank right back, two skunks pissed & pissing, smelling like skunks.

but somehow (was it mutual hate for a stanker fuck? a song

our dueling shoulders found each other in? a synced nod?

being the only of our kind in a room full of not-us?) here we live

two stank bitches, thick as mothers, a lil gone off love’s gold milk.

i didn’t know when i thought, i don’t like that hoe, it was just

my reflection i couldn’t stand. i saw it. the way you would break me

into a better me. i ran from it. like any child, i saw my medicine

& it looked so sharp, so exact, a blade fit to the curve of my name.

what a shame. i was slow to you. walked up on you like a bee trapped

in a car—all that fear pent in my wings, those screaming, swatting giants

& then, finally, the window, the wind, the flowers, the hive

myqueenmyqueenmyqueen!