soft magic.

by Upile Chisala

dedication for my loved ones, gone and living.

melanin

黑色素

emote

cassava

okra

jogs your memory,

home is far and you’re hungry for it and the stubborn ocean won’t disappear.

people who only wish to stifle your bloom, do not belong in your garden.

I was intended for you, lover, what does the ocean matter?

I hope to do with words what dancers do with limbs.

kinks

I must warn you, there is soft juju at work in my thighs.

validation,

Celebrate your skin.

it is when we don’t believe we are enough for ourselves that we start looking for people to drown in.

to the girl at battle with her body, I pray you find a place to lay your weapons down.

I’ve been tossing and turning for hours, trying to sleep you out of my skin. darling,

dear lover, I am sorry we can’t pray away the ocean that parts us.

girl, who taught you to be so silent? to fold your opinion back into your mouth so neatly?

I remember the first time you feel in love. you said even the water tasted funny, and taking in air felt like sipping galaxies. you looked at everything like you’d never seen it before. this is the first time I realized that love for a moment or a season, can make an entire universe seem like it was just created.

darling, remember to run from men who promise you completion. you are already whole.

celebrating yourself from skin to marrow, you are magic.

melanin children

felony

His kisses are love letters addressed to my soul.

I look like my father. I emote like my mother.

dished out the meal.

Loving someone who doesn’t love you back is thankless heart work.

you are many great things.

thrice

home is my mother’s voice.

your body is not a burial ground for the insecurities of others.

she told you that respect was in movies and kind love was only in poems. and you almost believed her.

honey, you need to say the thing before it forms a storm in your chest. you can’t keep carrying anger in your bones because you are too afraid of letting poison out. freeing yourself from the thing won’t make you serpentine. you mustn’t keep anger tucked in your skin like that. please darling, say the thing you mean to say. say the thing before it builds a home in your blood. say the thing before you become the thing itself.

To the men who loved me inconsistently, I survived you.

they tried to comb out their problems over the sink of your happiness.

so darling please stop thinking of new ways to die.

I now know that you’re a wild thing, I am sorry I tried to love the forests out of you.

Find a lovely thing and respect it.

(what they carelessly gave us. what they’ve been trying to take back)

kiss me all ways. kiss me always.

sometimes it feels like I dreamt you up darling, like I closed my eyes and created you.

too many of us are oceans with lovers that never learnt to swim.