Nayyirah Waheed - salt.

salt. Copyright 2013 Nayyirah Waheed All rights reserved. ISBN 10: 1492238287 ISBN-13: 978-1492238287 it was only and ever love. for us iyo. nchele. mui. lonu. paakai. cho. masima. ama. wardan. ityuwa. noon. salila. munya. zede. chewa. mith. nnu. lobon. hapi. letswai. juky. milh. sogum. mongwa. uppu. saahl. cusbo. unkyre. tisnt. lun. nkyen. ambel. namak. gishiri. asin. chumvi. sohgoom. iam. malga. yim. loon. mungwa. shio. uyah. zhiiwitaagan. ukyra. gleua. isawudo. taab. labana. meleh. ntsev. hoh-rum. aymara. nkyini. yn. tswayi. sotoe. nun. chumb. garam. disel. nkyene. lu-nu. melh. tsira. nimak. sogidda. iztapinolli. loonh. muo. umuchene. mithu. kashi. nkyene. melach. lon. agh. krip alati. tuz. sl. marili. suola. sol. sare. sl. sare. s. sil. halen. zout. salann. druska. salz. so. sale. sel. sal. salt.

water clings to my wrists. it has been my fragrance since birth. i am always writing of you. for you. breath | my people can we speak in flowers. it will be easier for me to understand. other language the morning is younger than you. but you will always be more tender. age you broke the ocean in half to be here. only to meet nothing that wants you. immigrant cruel mothers are still mothers. they make us wars. they make us revolution. they teach us the truth. early. mothers are humans. who sometimes give birth to their pain. instead of children. hate sometimes there is more water in a poem than in the sea. three waves wash their way into my hand. they are the water in this poem. what massacre happens to my son between him living within my skin. drinking my cells. my water. my organs. and his soft psyche turning cruel. does he not remember he is half woman. from the hard season will split you through. do not worry. you will bleed water. do not worry. this is grief. your face will fall out and down your skin and there will be scorching. but do not worry. keep speaking the years from their hiding places. keep coughing up smoke from all the deaths you have
died. keep the rage tender. because the soft season will come. it will come. loud. ready. gulping. both hands in your chest. up all night. up all of the nights. to drink all damage into love. therapy trust your work. would you still want to travel to that country if you could not take a camera with you. a question of appropriation flower work is not easy. remaining soft in fire takes time. when your mother unbirths you because she smells swans in your skin it feels like she is singing in salt. and her eyes carve you out of her body. you are a dream undreamt. and this is a holocaust that winter birds will never know. swans black women breathe flowers, too. just because we are taught to grow them in the lining of our quiet (our
grandmothers secret) does not mean we do not swelter with wild tenderness. we soft swim. we petal. we scent limbs. love. we just have been too long a garden for sharp and deadly
teeth. so we have grown ourselves into greenhouses. greenhouses i knew you before i met you. ive known you my whole life. nafsi she asked you are in love what does love look like to which i replied like everything ive ever lost come back to me. when you are here everything is wild. moon are your eyes blushing ? even the small poems mean something. they are often
whales in the bodies of tiny fish. there are feelings. you havent felt yet. give them time. they are almost here. fresh his back was a hundred stories he wanted to tell me. a hundred lives he wanted to live together. muscle (how many hours i spent reading his skin) i am such a sensitive summer thing. when you are struggling in your writing (art). it usually means you are hearing one thing. but writing (creating) another. honest | risk i found flaws and they were beautiful. ugly take the art. slice it from their skin. leave the color behind. flower crowns and bob marley t-shirts my heart is in my mind. i think this is why i am an artist. i bleed every month. but do not die. how am i not magic. the lie i will crawl for white beauty. eat my arms. barter my legs (make my thighs into altars of grief). for skin that does not drink night. hair that is not angry. body that is not soil. i place curses on my flesh call them diets. tell my ancestors they are ugly. howl at my nose until it bleeds. run my heart across my teeth, repeatedly. i am dying. to be beautiful. but beautiful. is something. i will never be. by the time we are seven where you are. is not who you are. circumstances i am a child of three countries. the water. the heat. the words. lay down. let me put your flowers on. fall both. i want to stay. i want to leave. i am three oceans away from my soul. lost i lied. i told you i was not afraid to love you. then i walked away. and loved you. i have spent my whole life alone. loving you | when we choose fear i am your friend. a soul for your soul. a place for your life. home. know this. sun or water. here or away. we are a lighthouse. we leave. and we stay. lighthouse she was the color of evening husk and salt. i wore my voice with her sometimes my fragrance others. she was a beautiful place to bare my legs. night my countries. and eat the hot winter. thaw if i write what you may feel but can not say. it does not make me a poet. it makes me a bridge. and i am humbled and i am grateful to assist your heart in speaking. grateful expect sadness like you expect rain. both cleanse you. natural african american women are easy. inferior. africans are dirty. jungle people. african americans are lazy. indolent. african people are too black. ugly. african americans think they are better than us. africans think they are better us. listen to the sound of us | we are breaking our mothers heart | the ancestors weep at how much we look like the hate that came to eat us sit in the ocean. it is one of the best medicines on the planet. the water if we must both be right. we will lose each other. exile he was so beautiful because when he held her he was not concerned with being a man. being a man had nothing to do with this. these flowers pouring from his chest. weightless we are never our own. we must change this fact. acceptance i wake to you everywhere. yet you are not here. reach my english is broken. on purpose. you have to try harder to understand me. breaking this language you so love is my pleasure. in your arrogance you presume that i want your skinny language. that my mouth is building a room for it in the back of my throat it is not. i have seven different words for love. you have only one. that makes a lot of sense. i dont pay attention to the world ending. it has ended for me many times and began again in the morning. the idea of a second heart. i want more men with flowers falling from their skin. more water in their eyes. more tremble in their bodies. more women in their hearts than on their hands. more softness in their height. more honesty in their voice. more wonder. more humility in their feet. less you tell me burn yourself white, it will make me happy. my sadness is sharpening itself against my teeth. you are the color of soft coal. and just got back from visiting your mother in last nigeria
month. you say look baby, look, what i brought back for you.
i move out. . lunch with your sister is slightly trembling. you want to touch her opening cheek with your hurt.
she wont really look at you. it is better not to talk. no words can put out the pale fire spreading across her
face. . you are sore from all of the white women in magazines.
coaxing you out of your skin. their fragrance is all over your friends at school. you can smell it. the heat of whiteness on their necks. maybe, as your hands. brush pain and relief into your face. maybe, now you say, the world will leave me alone. bleach if your light falls out of your mouth pick it up. (and put it back) noor you will drown if you do not have boundaries. they are not optional. this structure counts on your inability to say no. mean no. they take no from our first breath. go back and return it to your mouth. your heart. your light. swim | women of color you see your face. you see a flaw. how. if you are the only one who has this face. the beauty construct white people are not chinese. because they are born/live in china. white people are not indian. because they are born/live in india. white people are not african. because they are born/live on a continent they murdered
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