nejma

by Nayyirah Waheed

put some honey and sea water by your bed. acknowledge. that your being needs sweetness and cleansing. that it is sore. that you are. soft. — orishas

you were three years of water.

grieve. so that you can be free to feel something else.

when words take off their clothes. for me. so i can write. them exactly. as they are. — skin

and i heard her say, ‘you are afraid of love. but love is not afraid of you.’

there is prayer in poem. when i am writing i am praying. all the prayers that are too soft. too young. too old. to say.

with grace. with grace. with grace. you will bare and you will sieve. with grace. — husk

our tragedy begins humid. in a humid classroom. with a humid text book. breaking into us. stealing us from ourselves. one poem. at a time. it begins with shakespeare. the hot wash. the cool acid. of dead white men and women. people. each one a storm. crashing. into our young houses. making us islands. easy isolations. until we are so beleaguered and swollen with a definition of poetry that is white skin and not us. that we tuck our scalding. our soreness. behind ourselves and learn poetry. as trauma. as violence. as erasure. another place we do not exist. another form of exile where we should praise. honor. our own starvation. the little bits of langston. phyllis wheatley. and angelou during black history month. are the crumbs. are the minor boats. that give us slight rest. to be waterdrugged into rejecting the nuances of my own bursting extraordinary self. and to have this be called education. to take my name out of my name. out of where my native poetry lives. in me. and replace it with keats. browning. dickson. wolf. joyce. wilde. wolfe. plath. bronte. hemingway. hughes. byron. frost. cummings. kipling. poe. austen. whitman. blake. longfellow. wordsworth. duffy. twain. emerson. yeats. tennyson. auden. thoreau. chaucer. thomas. raliegh. marlowe. burns. shelley. carroll. elliot… (what is the necessity of a black child being this high off of whiteness.)

and so. we are here. brown babies. worshipping. feeding. the glutton that is white literature. even after it dies. — the hot wash (years later. the conclusion: shakespeare is relative. white literature is relative. that we are force fed the meat of an animal that our bodies will not recognize. as inherent nutrition. is not relative. is inert.)

i have been eating flowers. drinking honey. every day. for every meal. all this sweetness eases my blood from missing you, madiba. — coping (grief poems)

sometimes i want to say it. and there is nothing in english. that will say it.

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

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

all the women. in me. are tired.

my sister says i must say goodbye to my old voice. (even though it is still hot from my mothers’ pushing.) she says i must untie my tears from my eyes only at night. she says ‘lua, you will smell like a woman now.’ and i am lost in the way the sky is falling through her hands as she tells me this. there is a baby in my blood. where will i live.

you want a romance with my blackness. and how it holds you. how it illuminates your skin. makes you break your breath. against itself. and how is this possible. when your world has never made you breath. not once. ever. but my blackness makes you think about yourself. in a way you have never. and you are open. a question. alive. and now hungry.

my blackness is your first love. you are convinced it is. showing you what your eyes could ‘never’ see before. a ‘world’ bigger. brighter. dark. dusky and wild. unashamed of itself. rebellious. and it’s cosmic. your relationship with how the night rolls off me into your hands. you and my blackness are soul mates. you met so you could learn. more. expand. because you always knew you were not like the others. who made sure they ate one white thing every day. no. you were always uncomfortable with yourself. you wear my culture around your neck. bask in and praise its jewels. pick it up on days when you want attention. put it down when it starts to stain. (you don’t want to be disrespectful and take more than you should. you just want to be a part of something so beautiful.)

my blackness came to save you. came to help you escape. the clutches of racism. of having that beast anywhere inside you. around you. next to you. your comfort. intimacy. proximity. with my blackness confirms. and affirms. your nonracism. your lack of hate. it is this heady trip. this painful awesome tryst. that brings you. flushed and moon eyed. to my door with thank yous. and i love yous. you have taught me to be a better person. you have changed my life. but this was never a relationship. i have no idea who you are. and i laugh incredulous and i...

a poem can eat a person whole. for years.

every poem. here. is an unwrite. of all that has been written in me without. permission.

the way a poem bleaches everything the color of itself. this is the way people stain. — pomegranate

i was made from sex. there is no shame. in such a creation. — clean

whenever i think about my mother and father. and the amount of cruelty i have ate at their hands. i remember that i am the best of them. and i am at peace. — redeem

don’t give. it. to your children. the thing. that was given to you.

the prayers where we do not wish others well. for all the brilliant. fetid. noxious. reasons. the prayers we want to wash from the sky. as soon as they leave our imagination. the ones born with no bones. so they leave no trace. the harmful prayers. we pray. because we have been harmed. we are forgiven those too. — the soft law (forgiveness)