Carribbean

animadi

No Escape

I don’t think people know the many and strange entangled reasons a young woman would get into the car to be whisked off into danger by a white man twice her age.

To talk to them on the internet.

There are things far more dangerous than any one man, life for one.

But then you look over and realize you might be left alone with him, and question if you are walking away from death or towards it.

Also, what about those of us without escape? Where home is a safe slow stumble and life is a basket of blanket stares, longing and fear?

We have parking lots. Not cottages. We had gravel and tim horton’s at 2 am.

We sat in our parents car for as long as possible just to be alone.

We took baths. We took showers. We slept.
We hid in our minds.
Secrets became refuge.

Always watched, but so unheard. A thousand bruises went unnoticed as your parents locked the door, closed the blinds, and turned off the light to keep you safe.

Then you become an adult, and anywhere could be a possibility, but you that cage of your youth feels like a tomb drawing in.

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animadi

Wishing for freedom

brutality on black bodies

Even a blue dust bathed bra soaked in the sweat of my sun soaked skin bites.
Bites into tender sides
Pinches soft parts
A wire to my lung
A sternum on fire with irritation
Bound 
I am bound.

Stuck in the illusion of safety – when the very things that cling to my sides could kill me at any moment
I must hide my breath and hold my heart…

A bright bird wings beating
Bashed in, time and time again
As the ways of the world claw into me.
Crack my rip cage open between the sobs that rack me
And grab grab grab my frightened bird
Always trying to dash her in the dirt.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to let her fly away.
I wish I too could join her.
Away from hands that pick
Bindings that poke
And the terror to breathe full breaths as I fly so free.

animadi

As I lie waiting

Remember when the drinks stopped pouring and I came undone?
walking home completely sober limbs pulled apart
concrete under finger nails I dug in desparation
past any point of return
dug a grave shallow so all would see my rot

What prayers were said?
who stood vigil as I returned to earth?
did you sprinkle sand and seeds over my greening grave?

Did you kiss the memory of loving me in the dark?
the softness of my skin seared into your fingertips.
How many tears were shed?
did you count and collect them all?
A quantification of a life lost…
a callous number to round out so much incomplete dreaming…

footsteps never taken
passports never stamped
but so many stolen kisses
So many words bleeding heavy over poorly bound books
purchased in the absence of real direction

grants unfinished
unfollowed up on
without any hope of panning out
effort to what end?

now I am the bones ground away by time
the marrow that feeds worms
the earth
now I wait for the sun

animadi

Sweating and Waiting

I rub your face with my sweat slick hands
Hands I sat on and rocked waiting for you to arrive.
Hands that were as cold as they were filled with anticipation.

My ass was cold through thin trousers made of cheap cotton sewed by small children.
Children with big eyes and brown skin.
Children that for a difference of a few years, looked just like me
I smelled my sweat and the cold wind hitting it just so that anyone who came near me would know … “Yes, winter sweat, that is what I am smelling.”
This intermingled with the rusty bench, cold and metal.
These scents existed in a loop my mind traveled across paying attention to each part in a sequence, over and over.

All while waiting.


Fluids fell out of me as I anticipated you.
Your feet stepping on concrete.
The feeling my eyes sent my hands as always imagining caressing your coat when I saw you before burying my hands diving past each layer.
I always sought skin.
I wanted to find where I could feel your life…pulsing and tell you with my fingertips how much I loved you.

I couldn’t with my mouth because it would scare us both but my hands could whisper truths to your spine.
I know your heart would hear.

For now, sweating and waiting.

animadi

On Being Water

I am an ocean.
I am rivers, estuaries, and seas.
I am moving living water.

I flow, dive, soar up towards the sky and exist with a kind of freedom beyond words that demands so much if you watch.

Rain I am rain.
I am relentless, pounding, and shimmering.

Water that cycles and lives.
Moves and loves.

That is me.

animadi

Watah Calls

It rains.
I pray to the ancestors.
I pray for my mother.
The blood I shall spill and the wrath of the mighty.
In the night I hear my destiny rush between drops.
Rain, she calls.
A river spills over my body from above.
May the world drown and the ocean swallow us whole.
May we tremble as our breath is pulled away.
Oceans.
Oceans, call to me.
Fathoms, reaching from fathoms.
Yemaya calls to me.

animadi

Mouth Like Mine

Mouths like mine, glistening through pen and ink on paper.
Illustrated fullness and so much inferred gloss.
Eyes furried with lashes.
Glamour heavy,
A gaze soo sultry that it drips sooty kohl.
Exaggerations
Additions
A body divided.
A beauty fashioned together.
The mathematics of artificial aesthetic.
And yet through the all the noise
Of features I do not have.
Within a geometry I cannot posses.
I see a mouth like my own.

animadi

No alms required

My pussy isn’t a begging bowl.

I do no offer it open and pleading
trying to capture any affection you should choose to fill it with.

Do you imagine that later I sift through the contents while lying on the cold tiled bathroom floor?
Fingers deep in my cunt searching for something resembling love as your reckless indecision pours out white and sticky onto my thighs?

My mouth isn’t trying to hold your tongue between my teeth.
Why would I silence a voice I have pleaded to hear so many times? Do you know how much of my own blood I swallow each time I bite down on the words your actions make me fearful to say?

I do not tie your hands together with my pink rope. Neither do I shackle your feet to one place with gold bands, red silk, nor the weight of so much guilt.

I only offered water, asked for stories, and gave you the warmth of my bed to rest from your days of running.
All the while seeing the expanse of your dreams and hoping you would not cower at the sheer magnitude of my own.

animadi

Wet Earth Pierced

Sexy is summer sweat and realizing how the musk of wet earth first pierced reminds me of the first time I explored you from behind.
I love the smell.

I always want to be deliberate with you.
I coaxed and nudged, raining down kisses as I dug deeper still.

Wet earth, I only dig in wet earth.
Let me drown if I must, breathing only enough to continue.

Your mouth a prayer, i can never forget the first time i watched desire play over your face.

I want to tear into you still.