i know something that doesn’t die can’t be beautiful.

have you ever stood on a frozen lake, California?

the sun above you, the snow & stalled sea—a field of mirror

all demanding to be the sun, everything around you

is light & it’s gorgeous & if you stay too long it will kill you.

it’s so sad, you know? you’re the only warm thing for miles

the only thing that can’t shine.

the flower who bloomed thru the fence in grandmama’s yard

flowers is niggas too

this here nigga grown

snug into a chokehold

to set him free

would mean to behead him

some would split a nigga neck

let him bleed out tucked behind ear

tupac of a flower

white picket clasping the throat

descendent of a self-picked field

almost miraculous & out of context

like niggas in Utah

grander for his quarantine

how white niggas looked at me sometimes

petaled nigga child special only because it is

divorced from the garden

hands plucking my weedish bouquet

we love niggas we love niggas not

prisoner of wood & accident

he leaned himself into meaning

trapped in observation

well-bloomed nigga

annual like the death of aunties

locked in & strangled pretty

nosey-ass flower peeking his head

in search of greener grass now stuck

in a guillotine refusing to guillotine

assimilated into barrier

black cop of a flower

shimmied into place & now

you can only leave here

dead, silly nigga, fences

are for fences you trespassed

& now you locked up

the fence wears you

like a single yellow hair

you wear the fence

like a little boy

in his mother’s blue gown

drowns or wishes to

why are you here living flower

in a dead tree

why you running from

what still rooted where you started

who the ghost who haunt your dirt

do they slick around your feet

gray as worms do they make

your mind feel like wasps

did you stick your head out

just to breathe only to have

your head bloom bigger

than the window do i pluck

you now or let you wilt on

your own o my nigga

my nigga is death any easier

if you can call your

killer kin

in lieu of a poem, i’d like to say