Goals

Kai drove into town mind running, fueled by one statement and question, “You guys were goals! What happened?” They really were. She loved that man like her life and salvation were dependent on it. As a devout Christian, and a child of divorce she would never separate her family, and she would never make her children face the pain and instability of a broken home. The home her and Jeremy created in their twenties slowly began to crumble but from the inside. The facade remained in tack but as if termites ate away at the scaffolds of her mental health and the splinter in her eye was perceived by Jeremy as a beam. Somehow the emotional abuse she’d faced behind the closed door of their bedroom crept down the hall morphing into a monster she could not reason with.

It was by God’s grace that she had birthed two children and for Kai, they were the sun and moon. The days and nights spent alone caring for her family were illuminated by the lives of Damascus and Taliah. Yet they also slowly revealed the other side of Jeremy. And when she knew better, Kai resolved to do better. Even if it meant abandoning the god she worshipped all her life.

Summer

What is your favorite season of year? Why?

Now that it’s summer

I’m looking for you

Thought I found you on social media

Way back when

Thought I found you in church

Singing sweet and low the souls gospel hymn

Thought I found you in hip hop

A dope rhyme, boom bap, Ellington on keys.

Thought I find you in a club, gym or speakeasy

A meet cute so serendipitous it’d hurt your tooth

And now that it’s summer

Hoping you find me.

fitting room

Excuse me sir

Can I have a room please?

One with enough space

to try all that I’m carrying

And maybe you too, since you know it all

With all this time – just once – wouldn’t spoil it all

Show me what you know, just tell me where

I won’t hesitate when you tell me to put it there

And how about this?

How does it look?

What does it make you feel?

Do I have you shook?

Would you do this?

If I called would you come?

To my fitting room

Let’s see what this becomes.

I didn’t like you

Somehow I’ve told you everything

I never thought I would,

Then have the audacity to say to me

All the things I “should”

I didn’t understand your positivity

Far too afraid to ask

Hoping one day you would give to me

A moment of your past

Is that what they gave to you

Something I couldn’t

When it all started out so terribly

How could you ever really like me?

Life full of drama running from impending trauma

Too foolish to find my way out

I don’t know why I did it

Can’t see you without him

That you are the last piece of who I was before all of this

Before I was sad and hopeful,

I had a plan

Now I’m bent and broken

On healings long worn path.