"For the Ks"
a poem from STUDY OF LOVE & BLACK BODY
Bloodlines aren't lines, they're supernovas. This is what I should have sobbed into my pillow and the face of my lover. Instead, I said: We were children together through chokes and veins of snot, and the only thing I had to show for it in the morning was a white stain on the black sleeve of my hoodie, and one eye that throbbed like a star through the afternoon. Fact is, I haven't seen you in decades, a mystery since I was seven, a pair of laughing eyes and hidden hands. Our family wasn't built for boys. The only grand- father we've ever known knighted you Professor with the same tongue he used to terrorize our mothers. You and your brother both: our pearl-handled pistols our mothers shined and sent off into the world with a Bible verse in your back pocket and razor- sharp wit. All the women love you – their babies are proof of it – and all the legs spread with slick talk and twinkle like the crossroad avenues where you made your new names. The ones emblazoned on your necks and biceps, earned with blood and brawl. Don't let this poem fool you: there's no romance here. Only four Black adults who were children together. Two jokers with painted on Blood smiles, two fast-talkers with chop shop hearts scattered like dice in a crap game. Somewhere in here there's shame. And glory, tucked in the ribcage of our mothers, the graves of our fathers, and the sturdy brown legs of your children who are moving through the streets without us. Our lives still unfolding like the letters I have yet to write.
