To Skate On Sun

I’m not really sure what I’m going to learn in Humanities. I know what I’m supposed to learn, the topics that are most likely to be covered, and the information that is deemed relevant to the aforementioned subject. 

In defining Humanities though, as a study of culture and its geographical relevance, I feel like the information we’re allotted only mimics the information we’ve already been given. 

What I want to learn, though, are the secret parts of the world that the textbooks don’t bother explicating. I want to know how these hidden parts of the world affect the way I’ve been taught to think or the way it could transform the conditioning of my thought process.

Recently, I found out that the popular television show “Xena: Warrior Princess” was based on Amina of Zaria, who was a princess of Zaria (a province of what we now know as Nigeria). She reigned the Zazzau kingdom around 1545, and enriched it with metal workers and skilled warriors. She built earthen walls, known as Amina’s Walls that still stand. 

As a child, I was obsessed with Xena. As I began to identify with my own growing ideals, she became a figure of feminine power and is generally coined as the “feminist hero” . That ‘feminist’ character is based on a black woman who understood and exerted her power, (and her legacy just reaffirms that traditional african culture have always been matrifocal). When I found out, I felt slighted and deceived. Had I known about Amina as a child - a real black female warrior, I would have been able to kill some of the victim inside of me. But the west will not willingly tell us the stories that we need to hear about our own cultures - to the west, we are a symbol of the greatest european conquer. Look what they’ve gotten from us; our strongest children, our resources. The humanities textbook we are reading for this class will not teach me about my humanity, but rather a thwarted one - plagued with years of taking the love from other people. 

*This is the first narrative from my autobiography…Idk, I just wanted to share it*

On God and All Other Things that Hide:

Rabbits.

The ambulance trickled across my threshold, it’s lights mounting the opposing walls in increments, an ambiance of belts and shoelaces and all the things I could cut my breath with. We all followed standards. The EMT workers calculated vitals and ask procedural questions. I answered them and found stupid things to wish for. 

Normally, during this process, my mother will stand between both mirrors in the bathroom, throwing my belongings into pillow cases — finding the things I might take with me and finding ways to fit herself into all of them.

They only gave me medication the first time, when I was delirious with confusion and my hands, awkward as they are, grabbed at the bedsheets as if I could rip into a different reality, as if the one I was attempting to tear out of was the dream and all I needed to do was be pinched and woken. They take blood before they sedate me, as to keep the samples intact, then ask me to relax for the last time — forewarning. The sedatives do not make me feel as if I am being drugged. Being drugged feels like being drugged. Being silenced feels like silence. There is freedom in being out of your mind; however, being stuck inside of your mind is a different sensation. I won’t describe it.

Then they tell me, in this expressively permissive voice, that I can speak. It is patronizing. They want me to know that my self will is trapped between my teeth, that everything I say will be frozen between margins and documented for reference. I did not speak, the first time. I waited to be released from the sedative. I told the therapist this, two weeks into treatment. He asked me if I liked making people uncomfortable, I asked him if this surprised him. He didn’t answer. I didn’t really expect one, just maybe the courtesy of one. 

When my mother came to visit, for the first time, She stayed for less than an hour, laying hand made cards from my 8th grade classmates in front of me. They read silly, childish things: “Hope your Asthma gets better! Love, Tasha” and “Drink lots of Orange Juice. XOXO, Malea”. I didn’t want them. In the 8th grade, I was no secret. I had no friends, except for the books in the classroom libraries (that were significantly below my reading level) and the other strange girl who spoke only sometimes. These were courtesy letters, because the teachers had asked it of them.

My mother did not look at my hair. I was still natural then, matted into a box of curls, grease, tears and sweat. She offered me a brush, it’s bristles spaced evenly, the wooden handle thick in my hands. The guard cleared his throat. I couldn’t have that brush - it could be easily dismantled. She could only bring me sturdy things like wide-toothed plastic combs, and cloth scrunches, no rubber bands.

Before she left, she asked if she could bring anything back for me. I couldn’t think of anything practical to possess, not in a place where other children could barely remember their bodies. So I asked for a white rabbit. She returned, the next day, empty handed. In New York City, there were no white rabbits for sale.

1). When I’m coming

The woman between my legs is cardboard.

collapsible sometimes,

she creases into the morning like neon.

When my back is arching

A whole diagram of curvature spine and stretched girl,

I don’t see anything

Except for flooded ceiling.

I always almost cry afterwards.

I almost always feel like she took another penny of happiness

That I don’t get back.

So I don’t come easy

I tip toe towards it

Pause and honeymoon with feeling nothing.

And if I’m ready, only when I’m ready

I come.

2). Skin is retractable.

it goes where you tell it to.

It’s just documentation of the way dust can unravel

when you get stale.

I shrug mine off sometimes

Like tragedy.

Let it whisk between the tires like clovers.

There’s nothing anyone can do to it that I haven’t.

3). I can crack my knees.

Half of the time

I’m reassessing how reliable they are

When being knelt on.

When I figure it out

I figure I’ll be more faithful to god.

Submission comes in seasons.

4). I paid too much attention in psych this week

I’m trying to figure out which of my childhood memories are dreams.

I can’t figure out

How many times he was really in me

How many of them I nightmared

How many of them are aspirin bottled

How many of them are chubby kids that are too old to be colicky

How many times I actually died by jumping

How many tombs I’ve left my bones in.

5). I kind of hope that none of these are actually secrets

I kind of want my body to know me better than the bullets would.

There are too many people in my home.

When groundwork is flinching

The mist of a snowstorm is White Christmas

We are western sardines

we feel everything in interrupted increments of tremors.

“Your sisters are missing”

The gully of a Westchester bus ride

Swallows the democracy of rationale

It is your fault

When your mother blind folds god

And kneels at his silence.

Your sisters

Are baby civilizations

Gasping in the middle of an Opera theater.

They miss their father,

He doesn’t know what it means

to love little girls with their lungs

tinted in plaster.

I walk through my front door around 8:10.

The door wails like an unfinished composition.

My sisters are lying,

Criss-crossed across the living room floor.

I do not mention panic,

The way the thermostat flounders

Like the gravel beneath the foot of a dying dog.

There is no silence

Or mention

Of panic.

But my mother’s eyes are pasted to mine;

She still thinks of me as a dream catcher.

When you are the sardine in the middle,

You will play fetch.

You will feel everything. 

I miss the way my tummy felt when you kissed me. Like I was new to this, or you were breaking me into being beautiful or something.

On most summer nights, we were the most resistant lovers on the boardwalk. We walked, side by side, no hand holding. I kept my arms tucked into the pouch-pocket of my beach hoodie, and listened to the way we shuffled in silence. We were most comfortable that way; listening to the all of the ways we could be afraid of each other.

I fell in love first. I could tell by the way your skin bubbled underneath my fingers. See, that’s what love does to people – it makes their bodies like magnets. You made me want to pull the world from beneath me and tuck it into your pocket as a trinket.

You wore on me like an old book jacket, but I let you. You told me stories about how calm the edges of the beach made you; told me of how you surfed at night, only, because it brought you closer to the way you really wanted to die and nothing could be as scary and euphoric as that.

I told you that I slept underneath my bed sometimes to disprove the monster theory to the child inside of me. You told me that I had so much to fear, and too little to run from. You said it made you want to love me like a virgin.

Here’s the thing: When two people with claws for lips decide to take the summer for granted, everyone is bitten. There is always, always venom.

Before the hurricane, I helped my father board the windows and the glass doors. The sky hung over the Geraniums, and I stood on the back porch to let the moisture puff my hair and to wait for you, for the last time. I knew that you would be the resident dumbass. How could you not? You were more in love with adrenaline than the insides of me and I understood that I would always come second to the horror of nature, with you. I began to understand the pressure of infidelity. My beauty was boring, mundane, quiet, calm, but never fluent. Nothing like the ocean, and definitely not exciting enough to keep you.

I saw the red of your jacket first. It whipped around you while the wind seemingly increased its speed with your strides. I imagined that, had someone been recording us, we would seem like a romance movie with the captions excluded.

“You should see the waves.” You said, breathlessly. “They look like statutes.”

“That’s probably a reason why you should stay out of them.” I said, all of my hope stuffed into a few jealous words.

“Nah.” You grinned, my chest wheezed. “They’re waiting for me.”

“So am I.”

“Yea, but you’ll be here in a few hours. They won’t be as perfect they are now.”

“Neither will I.”

“Babe.”

“I’m just saying…”

The silence crawled into the space between us like a child, and sat there. I could tell that I had already lost you. Nothing in me was okay with that, but you would never let me fight for you.

By the time the hurricane walked itself into our town, the streetlights were of no use. The rain fell like sheets, and the wind stuck to everything like adhesives. I was scared. Terrified.

The next morning, the rain had subsided to a persistent drizzle. I called you, too many times, with no answer. I wasn’t worried, more curious. I wanted to hear your crazy stories about the tide – how it swept you into her arms; an insatiable mistress. I walked the boardwalk, my hood down, face moist. I knew I could find you at either beach 1, or beach 24: The first, or last. I lived between beaches 12 and 13, so I walked slowly to avoid seeming too anxious.

I reached beach 1 too quickly, anyway. The Rescue trucks were parked haphazardly, but I thought nothing of it. I figured that a child had been stolen from their stroller, or something typically drastic like that. I did not think of you when I surveyed scenarios in my head, not once.

I saw your jacket first, tented over the peak of the gate. The red of it seemed so much duller, like it had spent the night in a washing machine, ridding itself of the die.

I slowed down again, approaching with caution, like there was some ugly secret painted on my forehead and the rescue people would see it and know that it was mine, and that you were my fault.

A woman, small and pink, standing off to the side, watched the scene as I did with her mouth covered, tears straddling her eyelids.

“What’s going on?” I asked her, timidly.

“A boy,” she started, her words choked in her throat. “He drowned during the storm.”

“What was he doing?” I asked. My hands were clammy. I knew before I had known. I think that’s the worse part of it.

“Surfing.” She said. “They’re saying that his surfboard practically impaled him.”

My knees could not have supported me. Not then. I leaned against the glass of the storefront and gripped the ledge beneath the window. We had become some terribly written Greek tragedy, with a price tag attached, in a matter of hours. How could I tell your mother? How would she forgive me for letting you leave?

I felt guilty for being afraid the whole time you were gone, like I should have been fearless for you. Like my fear had instigated your death, like I had not been brave enough to be the woman who loved you.

We were the kind of dangerous, together, that left the wake of destruction behind us. We were incompatible and stupid, but so into each other and willing to be wrong in the end.

I stole your jacket from the beach, without the police catching me, and later took it to the cleaners for a color treatment. I wear it now, all the time, especially in the summer, when the sun is so relentless that it plays gopher with my skin. But I don’t mind the heat. I don’t mind feeling suffocated and irritated when wearing red. It is the color of fear, and danger, and caution. And it reminds me of the way I loved you, with passionate resistance and hunger. I wear all of those things well, like street signs. But I drive recklessly, now. I take the corners like big breaths. I let the fear dip into my stomach like a bad omen. And I smile, afterwards. 

I guess the easiest thing to do, especially in this community, is cosign. Someone likes a poem, we cosign. Someone enters a cool slam (we enter the slam, aka, cosign), someone writes a cool blog (we nod and cosign). I’m going to take a more personal approach with the task at hand, and before anything, hope that this promotes more conversation instead of miscommunication. We read this stuff – let’s talk, ya’ll! Let’s have these conversations. With that said, thank you Lo.

First, and foremost; for the record - I’m not retracting any of my statements.

So, for some of us, yesterday was a really interesting day. I woke up to a phone call from my home girls Jesica, Shellel, and Ceez – sitting in my facebook inbox was a poem from (Danielle Massey) with about 5 of my lines intertwined with a few of Shellel’s and Jean Ann Verlee’s.  At first, it was MAD FUCKIN’ FUNNY!!! I think the people in my building could have heard my cackling, had I not felt compelled to cover my mouth.  

At first, Shellel and I were like “Wow, we’re in a group piece with Jean Ann Verlee – this would never happen. Shout outs to her for being a magician,”

At first, it was funny.

It stopped being funny when she denied it. We were all friends with her on facebook, and (At first) we sent her pleasant (enough) messages, basically just saying ‘Hey. You kind of stole from us. We’re kind of tight. Can you just take them down?’ She was kind of just like ‘no, fuck out of here – I stole nothing from you.’

In retrospect, we are the idiots, to assume that we will not be stolen from. We don’t understand why someone will want to steal from us, or why we matter to them. We will say ‘my work isn’t that good – why steal this?’ It’s deeper than that ya’ll.  The fact that she stole those lines means that we have created an uncomfortable environment where a fellow artist feels the need to steal from the other artists in her community to get recognition from these same poets. It means that we have not created a space where everyone feels that their work is relevant. We’ve failed ourselves as students of the word and promoters of artistry. It’s heart breaking that she felt it necessary to do that.

I don’t think that there were any bandwagon jumpers in this scenario. I think that it’s easier to react when you are directly excluded from the situation, because there is an underlying baseline that shows that you are indirectly involved. It could have been any one of us. It could have been you, Lo, it could have been Diamond Wynn (with her recent, bomb ass posts), it could have been Ashley Johnson (if she didn’t take all her poems down), it could have been, and maybe already has been Justin Long (with his bomb ass word play). We all understand that it could have been any one of us. It is scary. Especially for people like me who are using some older poems in upcoming manuscripts. My worst fear is for someone to say “Wait, I’ve seen this before. Who took what from whom?” What came first? The chicken or the egg?

To say the least, the whole idea about us replicating each other in all creative processes is, to some extent, a whole level of truth. But there is a difference between sharing the similarity of a common idea like

“the whole unoriginality bit is VERY VERY subjective. So how do we feel about it: When people use our (as Jesica Blandon stated well) ‘truth’, lyrics/lines, choreography, and sometimes even intonation. All of these things are why the universal stereotype of “YOUTH POETS ALL SOUND THE SAME” exists. 

Don’t think so? Check it out:

Joshua Bennet: “Tamara has never listened to Hip-Hop”

Jorge Brito: “Jean Paul has always loved Geometry”

Jesica Blandon: “Julissa believes that if the world had cataracts she’d fit in perfectly”

So ^^ we have 3 incredible poets who clearly did not plagiarize one another’s work, but there is still evident duplication in the :

(Insert name here)+(general verb)+(dope description)…” - Lo Anderson

To be honest, contextually, these aren’t even nearly the same.

Here, a common idea is shared. There is a person, there is a story, and we’re going to talk about that story now. That ^^ was the introduction. We all do that shit. That is not unoriginality; that is the framework of storytelling.  It also, as Ceez rightly said, does not excuse unoriginality. It creates the bed for it to fester – how do we remove ourselves from this?

As Ceez also said, we want to promote inspiration. Yo – isn’t this, for all intensive purposes, the reason why most of us do this? Because we know that there is an audience, people that we can speak to, people who can hear, who want to hear. We wouldn’t want to prevent Danielle Massey from creating, but furthermore, we don’t want to be discouraged from producing out of fear that we will not be respected or appreciated for the integrity of our work.

To Danielle Massey:  When you produce your own work, we will be just as happy to read it.

To everyone else: When you produce your own work, we will be just as happy to read it.

I wish I had a lot more space, because I have a lot more to say. But this is just the basis of my opinion. I really hope that this promotes the discussions necessary.

Before I go: This is Danielle Massey’s apology message to me. “ would just like to officially apologize to you, BNV and everyone else, I had no intention of plagarism or anything like that and I did not remember that I had previously seen that video. You guys can think what you want about me and say whatever, that’s fine. But I am woman enough to admit my mistakes, even when they are accidental. You guys are all great poets and I would never intentionally do anything to disrespect you. Again I am sorry, if any of you need to talk to me personally that’s fine. Message me for my number. If not, again I am sorry and this will never happen again. God Bless all of you, never stop changing the world through your poetry.”

I appreciate you, Danielle Massey.

1).I taught a couple of 4th graders about advocacy.
They all looked up at me
Cheeks puffed,
Eyes deliberately policed,
Palms and fingers stalkish,
Like wheat plants.
Mouths,
Deliberately discursive,
And ready.
Notebooks in laps like they knew
Something about their souls
That the paper could never.

2).I’ve decided that when I graduate from undergrad,
While working on my Masters,
I’ll teach some high schoolers.
I want to be the cool nurturer,
With sassy book lessons
And occasional curse words.
They’ll all love me because
They’ll see me in them,
As much as I’ll see them in me.

3).I’m in love with you.
I’m cool with that.

4).My mother’s head nods 
are flamboyantly punctual.
She laughs with me,
When her tongue is repatriating
Her desire for god,
But her brain is always in grind mode
And in our home,
Logic says that only what we can see
Is of any value.
That explains why our love is so
Subopticaly discernable.

5).I’ll miss 
Her hugs while I’m away at college.
The dorm will feel like
Adulthood and all the mistakes
I could possibly make.
But I won’t make them.
I’m just tired of disappointing you.

Distance
Is like the salty ass
Nappy headed tomboy in the back of the class,
Who wants to hold
Sticky hands with the Social Studies teacher
Because the red pumps she wears on Tuesdays
Makes her dress hike up
An extra 4 inches above her knees.
And if the tomboy leans a bit counter-clockwise
While the teacher is on her tippy toes
With her back turned to the class
Hands above head 
Copying lesson to chalkboard,
The tomboy can see the swell of her backside
beneath the polka dotted silhouette of panty line.

Except,
Social Studies teacher,
Doesn’t hold sticky hands.
Instead,
She sanitizes both hands with Purell,
And reminds tomboy to smile more often
As if she has no control over this,
As if she doesn’t see
How hard it is to smile,
When you’re a nappy headed tomboy,
Who is as salty
As distance.

Fuck that shit.

Last night,
While the mist was teaching me
How to pleat my skin gregariously
Into my fists,
You were out 
Trying to forget me.

Told me
That she kisses better than me.
That you held her,
Like a vilified armlet,
Because she asked you to.
Because you needed to,
For you.

Hope it worked.
Hope you weren’t actually
Thinking of the way
My voice sounds better 
When it hums the modesty of your name,
Into your collarbone.
Hope you didn’t tremble like that.

Hope she doesn’t think
She did anything that the reservation
Of my fingers couldn’t.
Hope you didn’t let her believe that.
Hope it’s not true.

Hope you still checked your phone afterwards,
To make sure,
I wasn’t spilling my tempestuous nerves
Into a text message,
About how stupid I am, 
About how silly
These walls make me.
About how fluctuant my tough is
When it’s compromised.
About the way
My heart is aching for home.
About how home is where you are.

Except you were with her.
She is not home.
My lifeline,
Doesn’t tangle in the stir of her name.
Its too simple.
Nothing like you.
I never sent that text message.
Too worried that you would
Shove it back
and watch me choke dust with it.

Don’t apologize.
Can’t blame you for needing something better.
But I won’t kiss you the same.
My lips will forever be struggling
Do outdo a memoirists’ residual ownership.

This is still home.
Everything is still the way you left it.
Wipe your feet on the mat.
Lock door behind you.
Make this the last time we ever have to 
Balance on opposing livewires. 

It’s almost 5:30.
I told Dad
I would be there at 5:30.

In this train car
We sway like loquacious sonograms.
We could all be children and earth bound again
If we weren’t checking the time.
If we all didn’t have somewhere we really
Really needed to be. 

Caucasion cassanova stands next to me.
Baleful stare
Hidden behind Prada shades,
familiar.
Similar to the ones my mother’s old lover
Bought for my 16th birthday.

His arm brushes mine.
It was intentional.
I know this by the way 
His palms grip the handlebars,
Like his games are tattooed to metal,
And he needs to make sure
He’s digging for the right one.

I tense up,
Pretend to ignore the bravado 
Of his composure. 
He leans over to whisper into my ear,
“Take my number.”

My response?
“I don’t have a phone.”

In all of this,
I know that he could never have looked close enough
To know that seven hours later,
I would be coagulating his entire existence
Into a group of petty stanzas.

I know
That he doesn’t know,
That in my head
all men who stare at me too hard
Are potential sexual predators.
He doesn’t know that I learned this at 7,
When I first experienced carpet burns,
And sex,
And terror all at the same time.

He doesn’t know that he offended the fuck out of me.
And that if I didn’t have somewhere to be,
I might have decided to be 7 again,
But a lot stronger.
Angry,
Humiliated,
Unreasonably aching between the legs,
below my abdomen.
But angry.
But a lot stronger.
With stronger fists,
And better face to save.

It’s 76th street.
He has somewhere to be.
He gets to his destination before me.

Before he exits the subway car,
He leans over once again,
An uncouth debacle romancing mouth,
To call me beautiful
Remove his shades,
And wink the green of his eyes at me,
As if this would make him appear
Unalarmingly charismatic,
Or less harmful.

I’ve met his type before.
Twice over.

Dear white Cassanova:
I wouldn’t give the rest of my innocence to you
In a phone call,
Or a hotel room,
If the heavens could reassure me
A new name
Or a new mouth to collect spirits with.

3rd night on the Omer Calendar: Netzach ShebeChese “Valor of Love”



I’m a mortar shelled kind of girl.
Most times,
promises
are broken down saloons
At 4 A.M. 
On Christmas morning.
They all sound
Like double faceted scenographers.
Everything empty about them echoes,
Like I’m supposed to know
How to fit tongue inside of them.
Like knowing makes a difference.

Bravery is a monogrammed handbag,
A peddling huckster
with every intention of bartering
the tailwind of my concession. 
For now,
This,
Is a jilted suitcase.
All hidden pocket,
And seaside view.

There have been too many misidentifications;
This wasn’t your passport to begin with.

You want the truth?

Clemency is
Barebacked.
Lenient breaths.
Just all whispers.
Inadequacy not bashful enough to offer,
when the will is snuffed.

My uncle wants to collect himself
On my mother’s living room couch. 
For him,
Preservation is
a laminated lifeline.
Photographs, gunshots
and shattered China.
They all fit into his mother, 
The way he remembers her.

He remembers her coastal liner.
Arms flushed
Elastic enough to deflect sunlight.
Before the last two,
Nothing shined.
Her womb,
Was a hydrogen swallowing puddle of empty.
All broken china,
And broken men.
They just lie there,
And lie there.
Brought nothing
But post finger-nailed abortions.
The above said womb is now,
Even in her death,
A come and go memorial.
A collection of the things they left behind.
Some;
a hand, a heartbeat,
a partially charismatic smile.

Uncle,
Is scrounging for things
That were never there
In the first place.
My couch cusions,
Hide no tree branches.
Your father has never been here,
Nor has your heritage.
You come from a line of men,
Who have learned how to disregard their shoe sizes
In discussions of personal potency.
Come
From a line of women,
Who brandish their suicides in nightfall,
And childbirth.

I swear sometimes,
Your eyes do weird things.
Like they might have shined.
You were the almost one.
The sixth out of nine.
Like you could have shined.

My uncle is the kind of man,
Who remembers caution,
Only after he’s lost another piece of himself.

You might find your heart beat
Above the cervix of the woman
Still carrying your child.
Move a little quicker;
I hear that your heartbeat
Is still the echo of a fighting chance.

Someone told me
That this is my night to be redemptive
Like the scream of a thunderstorm in my fists
Is supposed to tell a story
Beyond the ones my lips can convey here.

All I ask
Is for the peace of this page
To speak with me.
An adlib, perhaps
I am fine with being mimicked,
As long as it whispers
The space between the bomb and the cry
Before the story is put on pause.

They tell me that a good woman,
Is re-written into her hair.
That she leaves it nappy,
That she stays still
while a man
Fumbles the quake of his fingers into her scalp.
They tell me,
That he is to search for urchins of soliloquy.
That the way he works his hands out of these coils,
However,
Is how she should measure his persistence.
If it does not hurt,
If there is no sharp
weave of violence singeing at the base of her neck,
then he does not belong in her tendrils.

Contrarily,
He belongs between her legs.

My hair is straight.
It tickles the part of my back,
Where my spine would fold.
Nothing testing or trialing about my scalp,
It does simple things.
It fights with the wind, sometimes.
It’s never really unruly,
I can’t trap any men here;
They follow me at night sometimes.
They ask me about my hair.
Ask me if they can touch it, if they can
Touch me.

I revel in how foolish they are.
I’m not the girl who lets men into herself,
I give myself to the woman
With fingers like birthdays
Who speaks of herself in third person
Because she knows what kind pen
She can un-write herself with.

I never really feel large enough to hug myself.
I’m never small enough to be anyone’s secret.
I am not my aunt’s definition of a good woman;
To her,
I am uppity,
Far too sure of myself.
Too smug to let my hair become the playground
Of a man who will watch all of it fall out
In the swell of childbirth
And old age.

In complete disobedience,
I tuck myself into the pocket of my next girlfriend.
And there may be 12 more of those,
15 of those
If it is my choice, between the now
Or the tomorrow of my womanhood.
And each one will walk away,
With a strand of my loose flailing hair,
Woven into a cuff of their winter sweaters.

I will never worry of being forgotten,
Or preserved.
I will be a memoir of sorts,
The simplicity of me,
Traveling in parts.
These are the parts of me
That don’t mind pausing.