why i love the word "apropos", freedom day & related musings

it's wednesday, september 24th. nothing particularly special about this wednesday except that it's my sister's 29th. other than that, you know i gotta peel my ass out of bed and go to work like any other day. after work, i rushed to clinton hill, brooklyn for a last minute appointment with my barber who keeps my frohawk lookin so tight! i'm sitting in the chair, talkin about a lil bit of nothing and tiny bits of something and who walks in? guess. go ahead, i'll wait while you suppose and ponder perchance who the fuck walked in the shop.

yes, my ex (i jest you not) strolls in and says "hi." mind you, 2 seasons have passed since last we saw each other. i don't even blink and i'm like "hi" right back. she says "you look good." i say "thanks". maybe social graces or bullshit pleasantries or ex etiquette would have me say some shit like "you too", but i don't think so and i ain't a liar so i don't say shit. after having been in an emotionally abusive, controlling and manipulative relationship with this person, i kinda stopped being attracted to her like FOREVER AGO. there was silence. maybe it was awkward for her so she says see you later, i say bye. and that was that. last time i saw her she was between my legs. last time i spoke to her we were fighting. i've had many visions of what that moment of seeing the ex post-break up would be like--i hoped i'd be wearing my fiercest outfit, stilettos too sexy for words, lip gloss popping, with the finest butch on my arm, looking blissful and loved. there was no stilettos or lip gloss, just me, chillin, in the barber chair on a wednesday night. i didn't then (in the barber shop) and don't now (sittin on the couch typing this) feel a thing towards her--not anger, not the desire to tell her off one last time, no missing her, not one single feeling of hoping we'd worked out, not wanting to fuck again. i didn't feel a damn thang. i am finally fuckin indifferent, nonchalant, aloof! i am finally fuckin free.

allllllllll of this happened on allisonjoy's borndae. how fuckin apropos. i declare this my fuckin freedom day. happy borndae girl and happy freedom day to me and to everyone who ever got free of some shit that had their soul on lock down. celebrate with me!

xoxo


[photography by www.anxiaophotography.com]

i know you have a girlfriend

look, i know you have a girlfriend. i know you love her: you've been together for years, you live together, share:
appliances
rent
stories
memories
a bed
a home
your heart.

i don't do that mistress shit. period. so no i ain't gonna try to holla when you're so in love.

despite this:
damn, you make me laugh,
you make me laugh hard like my stomach is still sore and we hung out hours ago.
you look at me like that, you blush when i dance and can't complete thoughts or sentences around me sometimes.
i laugh at you, at me, with you
cuz we're obviously attracted to each other but neither of us is gonna do shit about it.

you're sweet,
sweet in the details of things, of remembering what i say, checkin in with me, making sure i'm okay and lookin at me softly with everything in your eyes. when you look at me, i wonder:
was it necessary for you to look at me that tenderly?
was it necessary for me to look at you that tenderly? i don't know but damn i had to give you my eyes like that right then. it felt necessary
but
wasn't
?

i wonder if you
*didn't* share:
appliances
rent
stories
memories
a bed
a home
your heart

with her

if--if--if. where would that "if" go if i let it? somewhere not real, a fantasy of possibility full of "and then we would", "and we could", "and--and--and"
...so many ifs,
so many ifs

there's something between us
close enough to know it would be delicious
but
we have to keep our distance
cuz we cannot let ourselves taste...
ourselves.



being your friend feeds me in a slightly sensual, completely platonic way that absolutely respects your relationship with your girlfriend



ain't shit gonna happen between us
but more laughter



so i play "perfect" by doria roberts tonite at 5 in the morning
and tonite, this morning
you're the one i'm dreaming of

soft & sensitive

i wanted to bless you with my words, shower them on you
(incase you didn't know
when this poet gives words
it's an act of love)
so i started telling you you're sweet and kind--but before i could finish, you talked over me, told me i was callin you soft

you made the word soft sound like horse shit

are you seriously gonna hide beneath that gruff, emotionless exterior all day, all night?
you told me i'm so sensitive. i affirmed that conclusion but held back the instinctive apology i felt rise in me
since when is sensitivity a bad thing?
ralph tresvant thought it was alright. now it's a liability. something apology-worthy. i wonder if i was "sensitive" enough to "sense" you were stressed, give you a massage and make you your favorite meal if my "sensitivity" to your needs would then be something you criticized?

you're right i don't understand you. you take your time getting to know a woman before loving her or maybe the journey is loving, i dunno.

i do know:
you ain't soft/
if you was
soft
even a lil bit
you would say sweet things back to me
or at least let my sugar roll out my mouth
uninterrupted & unjudged/
if you was
soft
you'd let yourself have a feeling once in awhile
besides sarcasm, anger or happiness.
and maybe you'd share that once-in-awhile-feeling with this oversensitive dyke.
i'm not one of your boys,
not one of them butches you roll with,
not someone you give daps to.
i don't know who we are to each other, but i know we ain't that. there are intimate tender things brewing beneath the taciturn surface of us that you ignore and i search for. and i'm tired of looking--i'm putting my flashlight and map away.

congratulations on being Hard Butch of the Year.

i never said i love you, Professor Saaka. i love you

i'm procrastinating writing this. like i've been procrastinating living my life to the fullest. but my thoughts return to you so i am writing. i heard you passed today. immediately tears crawled out of me and i screamed. ran to my bed, lay there, cried. i cried mostly because i never told you how much you touched me. and that ain't right. you taught me ME. you taught me about me, you taught me about Africa, about West Africa, about Pan Africanism, about Kwame Nkrumah, taught me about our politics, history, spirituality. you taught me what cosmology means. and it has nothing to do with make up. it's how a people see the world. i still remember that, you had this way of making the complex so easy to understand.

i apologize so deeply for hoarding my words of love for you in my heart, they belonged to you, not me. and so now, inadequate though it may be, i hope it means something to say i love you. i thank you for dedicating your life to teaching people like me, for spending many more years than i've even been alive teaching. i thank you for being so open to speaking at that commemoration of Kwame Ture's life i organized my first year at Oberlin--you were phenomenal. honestly, you always kind of scared me. mostly because i felt like you could see right through me, i had no defenses or quick answers with you, just the truth of my thoughts. i know you have touched and moved thousands and thousands of people. and i hope i do you proud.

i don't think you're online in the after life reading my blog, but i do so strongly pray that you get these words somehow, that some angel delivers these words to you and you know they're from me and you know that for every word written here, there's so many others who feel the same.

Professor Yakubu Saaka, Rest In Power. i, and so so many others, love you and thank you, honor you and are honored to have known you.

tender by nature

there's got to be another way to love.

i am used to anger and defenses springing up hard and with fuck-you attitude. i am used to needing defenses, excuses, protection and rage. i am used to the fight in me being just as strong as the love in me. i think i must love you cuz i care enough to fight but really i just love being right. and that passion ain't got shit to do with who's in front of me. we could be talking about u.s. foreign policy, doing the laundry or how you strap on me. i just want to be right.

this is what i am used to: evidence and exhibits to prove my thesis and my conclusion. and there's bloodshed. there's cemeteries where our kindness and tenderness with each other is buried in unmarked graves this desecration of love we call a relationship pisses on. i am used to battlefield type love where we scream. and it hurts. and there are treaties we make and tear up. truces we grudgingly half-honor and then completely dishonor. and i say to myself--it wouldn't hurt if it wasn't love...it hurts because it's love, real love. but that's bullshit, love doesn't hurt, people do.

there's got to be other ways to love. i know because i have loved sweetly before, with kisses placed onto the sides of bellies, fingers sliding inside pussy as loving as a prayer, loving so deep i want to be vulnerable. i have loved like sharing secrets nobody but you knows, loved like traveling far to see you because i've got to see you. i have loved like love wants to be loved, loved holy like no words come close to describing this beauty, loved like when we can feel Goddess in the room.

i can be hard. walls so high, so thick, so dense, so fuckin serious. and it's work--it takes work to maintain the barbed wire all around me keepin whosoever might piss me off at a safe fuckin distance. i know i am tender by nature. so naturally all this hard is hard on me, hardly my favorite position. i miss the sultry of me.