( i love her aight. also this poem gets very graphic, so trigger warning. okay? )
Dear savannah,
The day you are born,
The women envy for reasons not placed
And the men begin to hunger,
For your body to pleasure them.
You were born to pleasure boys
Who were too big for their bodies
Who had black eyes and blacker hearts
And smoked cigarettes on sundays.
And the sticky men
Who bought their wives scandalous lingerie.
You were gilded, though rotten
You were tarnished silver
You were a war tale, a fresh battle wound
A tantalizing set of last words.
And on some nights, the stars wanted to be you.
The boys looked at you,
They longed for your taste,
On their dirty tongues, you,
The girl with the strawberry lips
And the bright, wide eyes.
The boys, they would come
And sing songs and shouts
They'd hurt the men sing to their wives
And jostle at their sisters.
They would pound at your windows,
Howl at your door,
Dangle golden rings at metal chains,
Cry your name for nights.
Savannah,
You let them in.
Let them douse your feeble, glorious body in rum-
And get drunk on your skin.
Them, the boys with black hearts,
Whose fathers told them to pay attention
To take notes
When they took belts to their wives backs
And seared fire into their skin.
Them, the boys who offered you
Dried flowers and stolen fruit,
For a night of holding you in their fists,
Gnashing you between their teeth.
Savannah,
Those jangling golden rings
Glistening in the moonlight,
Kept you awake all night
Didn't they?
And after the dried flowers crumble under your touch
And the fruit rots away, for you're too tired to eat it,
You close your lips-
Cross your legs,
And in the shower, you scrubbed until your skin
was red, raw, bleeding-
Trying to erase the scent of manhood
From your legs and teeth and throat.
And when your mother
Smelled the rotten promiscuity on you
Even after you sprayed
A whole bottle of cheap perfume
And scrubbed your skin for hours.
What did you do?
Smile and laugh, and tell her everything's okay.
Surely feeble fragrances will give you back
Your pure, virginal scent.
Savannah, there were nights
When the stars wanted to be you.
Those boys, they stain your sheets with bad choices.
They make you like your name only after they whisper it
In their drunken sleep.
Savannah, there is no perfume you can spray, no vanilla you can swallow
That will make you smell chaste.
You are long past the point of appearing pure,
Even if you really are.
You are long past the point of appearing innocent,
Because everyone has decided
That you never really were.
Even your mother, as she held you in her arms
Had decided what you would become.
What you had to become.
The doctor had to avert his eyes, savannah,
You were a sin waiting to happen.
Dear savannah,
The first time you ever
Held a boy in your bed,
He wrapped his fingers around your throat
Like he had seen his father do
When he got impatient,
And he told you to sing.
Your voice painted him in sweat, greed, hunger -
His fingers turned your neck sickly white,
Even though you sang in colors.
The boy taught you exactly
What your mouth was good for.
He wrapped his fist around your hair, jerked you back
Your throat a porcelain staircase.
He kissed the bones jutting from your skin,
And pushed his mouth onto yours.
Savannah, his tongue was soaked in you.
I think you taste yourself on his lips, and he tastes himself on your tongue.
And everytime he says your name, he smiles,
Savannah,
You were tarnished silver.
Your name was thrown across bedrooms
Like a broken promise,
Written in bruises across ivory backs,
You were a tantalizing set of last words.
Your mother apologized
To the people who'd seen you smile
Who'd heard you sing.
She begged you to ask the world
For forgiveness.
You'd always thought of your mother
As a wilting flower. Your favorite kind.
Savannah,
What did you think of yourself as?
Did you know that some nights
The stars wanted to be you?
The boys left your sheets reeking
Of bad decisions, cigarettes, rotten fruits-
Undeniable mistakes.
The blinks of your pretty eyes
Were thunderclaps, your smile
Was a flash of brilliant lightning.
All the people you came across
Could not resist observing the storm
Or having a taste of the winds.
And what do you do, savannah?
What could you have done?
The day you begin to say no,
The day you wash the scent
Of bad choices
And undeniable mistakes
Out of your sheets,
The day you no longer hear
The jangling of gold rings
On metal chains,
The day you stop running,
At one hundred miles per hour,
The day you are nothing but happy-
The world will give up spinning.
And i won't worry so much.
Dear savannah,
Some nights,
The stars wanted
To be you.