She loves me, she loves me not, Time will only tell as she pluck-pluck-plucks away my petals.

Don’t know where she went the young girl singing in the mirror – Crowded House and REM

We look up at the sky and see blue; uninterrupted and no one tells us we need to step out of the sun our skin a cloudless glow, we stretch

Because I can’t see your eminence while you're crushing and washing out your gem in never ending rivers full of cautioning ink.

I haven’t figured out what good parenting looks like maybe a dollar to not skip class two

Would you have loved me If they called me Jasmine Instead of Sampaguita

With Tamar’s jokes and my elders’ faces flash on tweet after tweet Rest In Peace, I don’t want to be here.

the showers are too weak in our new house, or else I am too weak, letting water pass right through me

how do we show up in our stories, when elders are no longer around?

When asked why I still have faith after all these years, I wonder how could you not?

conjuring the Sahara in our orange hallways & together trekking across those impossible sands.

Mami tells me this spell as we pass the rosemary in the garden. As she carefully grabs a stem, placing it between the palms of her hands.

It has been three seasons since I last saw you, she hums. I was beginning to forget your face.

I’m running out of options. because I like the impossible sound of a typing speed that isn’t going anywhere.

breathe in real deep. and release from the pit of your soul. and the seat of your spirit. wail like a banshee.

If you smile, you’re American, pushing happiness off as a goal post and not a choice made every glorious, American day.

homebody | cocoon | 2020 atrophied some of my hard won progress | change that officially by calling | 2021 the year of

I see your photo and imagine you must have been sweet

I learnt to believe that bad things come in threes

& her handshake is an embrace. The second mystery is that she smiles the vowels of my name