We don’t say sorry.

May I go outside
to play hide and seek?

The stars are dark
outside.

No puedes.
Ni aguantes.

You are not allowed
to ask
questions.

Once my mother said:

you don’t know
how to live alone.

She may as well
told me
I cannot survive
without a man.

And is it so bad?

May I come with you,
dear brother, please.

I want to learn
the game.

And in this hour
no one really knows
how to apologize
or take the blame.

No one is allowed
to love
so openly.

When I think
about colonization,
my mind jumps
to the Mayflower.

Just this week
I listened to a podcast
brown men
dating white men,

who have mastered
the ability
to open faster
than brown men.

If I date a white man,
why do I have to explain
my very existence?

Their proclivities
as men lie
in colonizing
the body.

And if I let them,
they may colonize
my soul.

No.
Do not trust
the white man

in the gate
or outside the door.

May you find happiness.
May you be whole.
May you find ease,

as told by the meditation
on repeat.

Tell me something
I don’t know.

Give me permission
to exhale, master.

May I sleep
with my work clothes

at the edge
of an unmade bed,

alone
like my mother foresaw.

These are my May days.

Don’t let me
be lonely

when my mind jumps
to looking:

JO / oral / verse / rimming / kissing / licking / spit / splitting / dom
my heart open

Open.
You?

As I prop open
the screen,

I respond:

kissing
oral
body contact
bottom

I am at the bottom
of a sinking ship

that should have been
a shipwreck,

a makeshift bed lies
under my skin,

in waiting.

these are the rules of the house:

we don’t say 		sorry

do not ask               questions

don’t love                 the whole body

so openly
                                don’t trust

so willingly		the white man
                               
                                outside

the door                   

don’t go		        sleep

alone                       we can't

you can’t		        
                               survive

without		        
                               a man