because I know the philosophies of
the mirror that laughed at my ugly eyelash,
the seas I sew with silk meander like the
thickness of whetted throats, calling the bastard
brother in the grave that forgot to light me
the remnants of his brain
to calm the stenches of a battered kwashiorkor-n* boy.

I don’t want to see how the hope of a black boy
breaks like the branches of Mimosa, like
the flood running down the streams of my eyes, and
like hell again, because hell is a smoke that crawls
incessantly into the feet of night children to,
with daggers, break the brightness that lights here
in our hearts.

I don’t want to see how hope falls like unripe mangoes,
because if they do, half of
the moon will see the impulses of their
brokenness in the right thumb of malignant fires,
and we will burn more than the hell that slapped
our faces before.

I want to yearn for the sounds of fallen
stars, like how gunshots thrill the hearts
of a little boy.

I want to see how hope rises like perdition, not for it
to stake the lives we hold, but for our candles to stand
thicker, and light for themselves, hungry looking lights.

*kwashiorkor – a form of malnutrition caused by protein deficiency in the diet, typically affecting young children in the tropics.