nejma

by Nayyirah Waheed

i am trying to remember you and let you go at the same time.

in the ocean she is making with her eyes.

(how do you return the sun back to the sky. with someone. and let them leave you.)

we return to each other in waves. this is how water loves.

be easy. take your time. you are coming home. to yourself.

know we are not. so then i say this to you.

you. with the low sun face. with the burning mountain eyes. you. with the skin is that is always dusted with stars. you. with the soil in your thigh. arm. lips.

you are pr...

spend time with this.

i am a soft revolution.

and here ii am. a religion made of myself.

everyone of your lives. is our life.

this poem will find you.

what happens when the war. no. longer wants. war.

the cure for apathy is memory.

there is dark. and there is anti light. these are not...

the thing i know as poetry. is that feeling ii...

why there is this. much. water in the blood.

all the women. in me. are tired.

i am mine. before i am ever anyone else’s.

your skin was the first astronaut. the first in space. you touch. talk. are intimate with the sun. everyday. and do not perish.

it is the books. written into yourself.

language down your back. invention in your mouth.

melanin is why you are still alive.

a ceremony of life. while you are asleep. a cosmos. in conversation.

immortal.

hate would be the anti light come to devour. defile. destroy.

a wisdom that is not bothered by such things.

the memory of life. all. in your skin.

complexity is just simplicity which refuses to be anything else.

i will make you. on my back. ii will raise you this way. a child of the gravity. and the light.

all the other wild adventures of missing. he would drag you through. would only ever be this wound.

took his blood. and walked out the door.

it would be the first and final. of all the leavings.

two lives. breathing from the same mouth.

poetry alters my dna. every poem is a different life. every poem brings me closer to myself. and breaks open a new future inside of me.

and you are open. a question. alive. and now hungry.

a ‘world’ bigger. brighter. dark. dusky and wild. unashamed of itself. rebellious.

how the night rolls off me into your hands.

you just want to be a part of something so beautiful.)

a poem can eat a person whole. for years.

i am taking a bath. i am washing a war from me.

on new years’ day. i woke. showered. the old year into past life. i fried calla lilies. broke honeycomb over my feet. drank water. fed me.

when you are midnight.

you silver. then indigo.

it is the transformation of human into sky and back again.

(that neverending nurturing you need. the sea has it.)

unwrite.

of all that has been written in me without. permission.

i am a boundary.