For the Sun of your Skin

sad brown girls

the words i bleed onto this page

echo of the pain that rings in my skin

the poetry of my mother a sad hymn

since you're here i'll admit

i am a brown girl that is sad and bereft

not surprising that sadness should come and rip open my chest

move my heart to the left

she made a home in my heart and it's broken

leaves me unloved but demands my devotion

she leaves me numb, frozen to emotion

i carry the weight of the words unspoken

seconds away from an explosion

but swallow the tempest and my eyes will be a calm ocean

maybe then you won't be scared of the potions

In my hair, in my skin, in my lotion

and you won't run from my emotions

and you'll swim in the waves of my ocean

but I wake and it's over

you're still gone so why won't it just be over?

when my words remind you of something you heard before

when I feel like lost homes and a forgotten war

i too like those brown girls

carry a sadness in me that I abhor

you're such a bore

stop acting like a whore

i have not willed sadness

called her or seduced her

i inherited her when i crossed the ocean

she gifted me with fatalism as a token

sadness has stolen

my girlhood and left me trapped in a semicolon

my heart still torn open

praying and still hoping

far too young to be knowing

that the blood colouring my thighs was an omen

gasping hardly coping

sadness is a terrible lover

i confess i am tired of her

if i could i would never let her in

she forgets to water to seeds she made grow upon my skin

leaves my lips tasting like the aftermath of sin

thinking of all the things i could have been

as i dance to the whisper of jinn