Moonlight glides across

The exposed body,

Heaven rooted in

Your ebony skin.

An exhale like the taste

Of sugarcane for 

Later evenings.

A breath of the lost, 

fallen green coconuts—

Still ripe on the dark earth

And soil over-tread.

And Carribean smoke—

A scent of guilt,

A sense of relief.

Hand-drawn fires

In heaps of dried grass

And tired, menthol buds.

A world

This night, 

Your place atop the sands,

Is still.

Your heart leans, though,

As you lay one palm

On top of hers,

The other entrapped in

Her grandmother’s

Box braids done just this

Morning on the wooden

Steps to the yard against

The creaking screen door

That never kept a single 

Mosquito out of the

Home.

And 

If your given senses

Bear the least

Of your purpose,

You think to feel her;

You hope to feel the

People you’ve grown 

Accustomed to like

The tall shadows

Of widows sown into

The tides.

Against the tides,

Those bodies you’d love

To meet sit placid

Like a father

Hiding guilt beneath 

Old-youth dreads,

Perched atop the sands

With a single cigarette

In hand just wanting,

Waiting to use 

Son and you

In a vocabulary

Years too late…

You beautiful boy,

This world confuses.

It chokes the life it

Gives life to.

Do not be the hand, 

The smoke,

That chokes you too.