you gave me a stone turtle, it held your palm’s scent for a week

i call your mama mama

you request like a demand, make me some of that mango cornbread

i cut the fruit, measure the honey

you & you & you & you go in on a dildo for my birthday

you name it drake, you know me

a year with you in that dirty house with that cracked-out cat was a good year

at the function, i feel myself splitting into too many rooms of static

you touch my hand & there i am

do you want to be best friends?

a box for yes, a box for maybe yes

did our grandmothers flee the fields of embers so we could find each other here?

friend, you are the war’s gentle consequence

i am the prison that turns to rain in your hands

you, at my door the night my father leaped beyond what we know

the branches of silence stay heavy with your petal

you smell like the milk of whatever beast i am

your poop is news, your fart is news, your gross body my favorite bop

you, drunk as an uncle, making all kinds of nonsense sense

i fluent the language between your words

& when we fight, not a ring, but a room with no exit

we spill the blood & bandage the wound, clean cuts with tongues

if luck calls your name, we split the pot

& if you wither, surely i rot

we hate the same people, say nigga please with the same mouth

& before we were messy flesh, i’m sure we were the same dust

everywhere you are is a church & i am the pastor, the deacons, the mothers

fainting at the altar

as long as i am a fact to you, death can do with me what she wants

my body, water, your body, a trail of hands carrying the river to the sea

i ink your name into my arm to fasten what is already there

you made coming out coming in from the storm

i would love you even if you killed God

you are the country i bloody the hills for

you love me despite the history of my hands, their mangled confession

God bless you who screens my nudes, drafts my break-up text

you are the drug that knocks the birds from my heart

o the horrid friends who were just ships harboring me to you

& how many times have you loved me without my asking?

how often have i loved a thing because you loved it?

including me

with yo ugly ass

at the end of the world, let there be you

my world

more notes & more acknowledgments

“niggas!” augments a line from Ladan Osman’s “How to Make a Shadow.”

“how many of us have them?” borrows its title and opening from Whodini’s “Friends” and includes a reference to Project Pat’s “Don’t Save Her.”