I am trying to write this poem that describes how I see you but my eyes keep distorting the words I want to commit to the page plus I am not really that committed to the words because I’m not convinced they’re accurate and besides that, these words are a little crusty and caked from being buried a few decades deep and since they got unearthed after all these showers I am not sure they are in good shape; are probably a little or a lot worse for wear and so maybe not quite what they used to or should be. I am trying to say this in a way that makes sense but I doubt it does and so I ramble when I should just say what it is and leave it where it is but you know how it is when you pull things up and the ground breaks around it and its excavation burrows a tunnel of fire through your chest, strips the lining out your throat and off your tongue, knocks your teeth all around your mouth? Have you ever swallowed your teeth? Okay so you don’t get it. So let me try this: I wanted just to say that I homed your fuckshit in my belly so long that I have fertilized a field and they are some of the most vibrant colors. They could be weeds. And facts: even weeds are useful sometimes. I should just tell you that you are harm and list the ways I hate you. But I stutter like this instead. I should just come out and say something about how desperate and unkind you are– crowding any space you occupy; how you are bitter as dandelion and sweet as wishing on its burst of seed; admit that I have tried to treat the honey in your tea for the tea itself. Acknowledge you are not who you say you are. But maybe I am unready or unequipped to accept complicity. I shouldn’t have tucked, tilled, or tasted the seed or fruit. On the other hand, you have long been mislead. The god of the soil from which you have been tilled is not the answer of ease you prayed for and you are not favored. These you claim not once noticing god shapes itself out of the tumble of our needs. I once had a god that folded me into thirds and sent me sailing across time and space. Then I caught sight of myself. A paper plane to some other eyes; I was sure I was a sankofa bird. Time enough wings fragile but brilliant as a butterfly’s; neither bird nor plane but flying. That is the god that reminded me: You are not who you say you are but you are everything you do. When it asked: are you flying or standing on shoulders arms outstretched in simulation, I thought of you. And yet another way I hate you. I hope you read this before you break someone else’s shoulders with your weight; that you grow your own wings. I hope you taste the sourness of your tongue. I hope you get diahrrea of your fuckshit. I hope you fertilize a field with it of vibrant colors that glorify the god of your need. I hope your eyes are never this distorted by the rain of your harm so that can see each and every one. I hope you read this until it sounds less like me stuttering. But, really, who am I kidding? You won’t.