DC

I am riding your black veins at midnight
Through the deflated artery of bicycle skeletons
And empty PBR boxes.
Barback lovers spilling out under lampposts
and blending into dawn as we coast
the mystery slick road that leads us home.

In the morning, we will find ghost stories
at the bottom of our Mimosas
And decide if it’s a good day for the museums.
But inevitably end up, like we always do,
At the drum circle in Malcolm X
Sunday paper prostrate and never enough
blanket space for all the
people who want to be close to us

These beats beckon in
children and picnicking couples
Acroyogaists and Hula Hoopers
And that one middle aged woman who
wraps a Sari around her belt
and calls herself Africa
Never misses a beat.

My city,
She dances with her heart on fire
She is barista eye candy and local celebrities
Lunch on a government per diem and
dinner on half priced appetizers
She is liberation dance parties and
Connect 4 games over a shot and a Natty Bo
She is more than Barack and Michele.

DC is Busboys on a Sunday or The Fridge on a Tuesday
Or Bloom Bars any day of the week
She is Ben’s Chili Bowl on Inauguration weekend.
The rotating bike lanes and Circulator Route
She is house parties where we forget our day jobs
And day jobs that make us care about living.

Living here feels fleeting enough to want to stay awhile
Enough to feel like someone, some of the time
Feels like everyone is in their 20’s and exceptional
and east coast educated and
all. about. the. journey.

Oh, my beautifully fragmented city
You are the S9 showing up at just the right time
And all those folks who still don’t know where the 43 goes
You are morning runs with the
trash trucks and homeless patio clingers
You are ubiquitous party attendees
and anything I read on BYT

When predictability sets in
You show me that newness can be
uncovered, even at home
That lucky is just the beginning of
what I feel for you, for this.

For the stages I can call home and spokes that get me there
For expanding friends into close-to-heart dwellers
For always having something to celebrate
and someone to do it with

You have made me a solid
You have reshaped my stubborn bends
And made me something worth gifting.

Tonight, I am biking down your moonlight
Grateful for the cool enough weather and
pulsing beat of my tired chest
Reminding me that this is how you
bring oxygen back to my heart.

Why He Comes Back Every Year

The blue sky sleeps beside me at night in a

puddle of blankets. The kettle howls on the stove like a

frantic child answering a question in History class. Daylight

escapes faster than fireflies in the summer. Hold on.


He is growing out his beard again and it reminds me of

unfinished poems. There is a frail peacefulness

in this Sunday afternoon- I hold it in my palms careful like

white holds the yolk; one puncture away from chaos.


We sit with hands clasped and thank god for feeding

all the world’s children. Through the window, I wonder

what it would feel like to see the sky fall for the

very first time. I am still the little girl

mimicking snow flakes for ways to navigate gravity.

When He Left

When he left my arm was still sleeping
This premature bed we shared was stirring early
and there was something about this morning that
felt like “you should probably go now.”

He woke up somewhere between
headache and slumber
and snuck out through the path of Sunday sunlight
warming my hardwood like an exit sign.

When he left I reset the alarm for the afternoon.
Thankful that our back door locks from the inside,
grateful that I made it to the bathroom before my
roommates caught the seat up like a question mark.
Stared at that spot on the wall that
knows my eyes too well
and went through my number in my head.
It’s creeping closer to 15 these days.

But I always say it’s 8.
8 is a decent person’s number.
8 is a figure left flat on its side to feel infinity
drip into the morning sunlight, tingle on my spine
knowing next I’ll feel that pit in my stomach
but for now I deserve the warmth of my blanket-
the reminder of how nice my naked body
feels underneath it.

Even though what’s to come is the emptiness of
where he barely was to begin with,
even though my comeback for “you deserve more”
will always be “I know.
So tell me where to fucking find that”
So I fuck. Because that’s fun.
And productive in a way that feels much better than
wanting, waiting.

When he left my lips were numb from
menthol and kissing and the scratches
on my back were proof of last night’s
inertia now scabbing over.

These sometimes lover scars-
I hold them close like heirlooms.
Tell myself that these are what life’s
pleasant wounds are made of,
these are the stories we control creating.

When he left, we didn’t give this night
more weight than it deserved
And so we didn’t exchange numbers
And so we didn’t lean on formalities or goodbyes
And so he didn’t put on his underwear
And so I didn’t worry about getting in touch to return it.

I just hoped he would keep this between us
Because in our lit hurricane of a windstorm
In our need for something refined and raw
We still were.

It was still respectful
It was still between two good human beings
It was still comfortable and mysterious enough
to make it exciting.

And maybe while the momentum of our night
was wearing off into sleep
I held him a little longer than I should have,
dreamt about the brunch we would
linger over in the morning
and kissed him as he drifted off to sleep.

And maybe I’m not really the kind of person that’s okay
with silent slipped out goodbyes.
They linger pungently on my morning
like orange juice after teeth brushing-
hang awkwardly over the air of my afternoon.

And maybe I could have lived with knowing
where you were about to go
A kiss on the forehead or a purposeful nudge to
wake me just long enough to see you leaving.
A sign that would somehow spell out a goodbye,
even though we both know you were
never coming back.