Demanding

Because you, each and every one of you reserve the right to demand that I be great.

Updating my soul...

If ever you come here and there isn't any new material, I have plenty of old life left for you to sort through.  

Love you.

Goodbye in Script

It was a beautiful letter written in the finest of tears and crafted by the hardest of hands.  It was written for him.  My script drew across the paper all of my hopes and dreams.  I wanted to give him a choice but he had left me none.  I wanted to love him longer but not from a distance.  I needed him there but not at the expense of drawing my own blood.  He shook me to the core but the letter was solid.  


This was goodbye, a funeral of fury, the viewing of a relationship that once breathed life from its mouth.


I was gone, this time for good.  Surprisingly I felt free and realized I was only loving him more because of it.

Spread Love, it's the Brooklyn way...

because nights in brooklyn often leave me inside out

and for that, i shine brighter

he does not dim me.

Front Row Seat

haven't i said that the person who kills you will show up to your funeral?

Skin of gold

because she is a poet

even when silence gets too thick to be a white girl anymore

google her.

The Sirens

When you finally stop hearing sirens, the silence can be alarming...

that's what it was like for me when I moved to the North Bronx…

there were elevators and grass, but no sirens

the concrete wasn't as dark as the sky right before the sun invades

and there was laughter without the interruption of gunshots

people keep telling me I've spent more time up North but the South coddles the most memories

I had my first nightmare in a one bedroom in the South Bronx

I had my first love in a two bedroom in the North Bronx

I jumped double dutch, ate five cent candies and watched my first friend kill himself in the South Bronx

the North Bronx never stirred me so

I never wanted to run from here because I never really felt like I was here

I smack my gum and I talk my shit

I am a child of poverty...

of spanish speaking godparents…

of trains rattling my teddy bears sitting on my window sill…

of bamboo earrings and milk crates for basketball hoops…

Those are more than memories…

More than places I've lived…

Those are places that live inside of me…

And while I thank my mother for moving me out, the South Bronx moved in and it has never stopped paying its rent to my ribs.