5AM Jazz Musings

this morning
i fell asleep to melancholy jazz.

the darkness in my room overcame me.
ever since i was a little girl 
i've been afraid of the dark. 

but the humming from my radio
cradled me, lulled me to sleep

until the sounds became 
so hypnotizing/so numbing 

that they melted into my thoughts
that manifested into dreams.

and i dreamed of being loved,
of gentle kisses on collarbones and foreheads.

i dreamed of poetry's and jazz's romance,
of their manifested languages lying in my arms, I'm kissing
its eyelids like it had done to me once.

when i woke up the music had stopped
and the first thing i saw was your picture on my wall,
your eyes staring so intently at me.

i used to love him. 

This is how my 20's are going so far

At midnight, I rang in my 20th birthday three mugs of wine past delirious and waited until 2am for a phone call I never got. By then the bottle was empty and I fell asleep with eyes spilling over like a glass too full in wet sheets cursing what's his face. The wine was for me to evade this familiar darkness I carried in my chest but that night it just grew and laughed in my face. Nobody knew I was depressed. That even when I was laughing and playing, my heart was a cracked levee ready to burst at any moment. That late at night it invited itself into my bed and cradled me and even when I asked politely to have sleep it didn't go away. That when I undress in front of a mirror and try to force feed my mind and make it swallow that reflection, it throws it back up and says, This is why he is with someone else. That I wake up in the mornings and have panic attacks about not finding something, anything to do because it will occupy my idle body, strap me to my bed, and torture me with several rounds of shocks of memory I shouldn't have seen in the first place. That my smile is a band-aid I wear over scars that it continues to pick at as they try to heal. That everyday I feel like jumping out of my bones because I can't take the consistent aching that runs from my legs all the way up through my heart and into my mind. All because somebody broke my little heart and people say that we all experience heartbreak but it was the way he did it. Web MD says abuse is one of the factors of depression. That was the first time I named what he was doing to me.

Wanted: Have You Seen Her?

I am looking for a girl and I'm wondering if you have seen her:

She was wearing her heart on her right sleeve
Dragging beaten baggage through the streets
When he picked her up
You may notice the brokenness in her smile
From when he tore himself from her lips
You may hear her cry in the way she laughs
She won't let anyone touch her
Because she is way too fragile already
Look out for closed doors and bed sheets
Because that's where she's used to him keeping her
She probably won't come out
If you call her name
So tell her what he used to tell her
That he loved her
That she was beautiful
And I swear she will think it is him
And fix herself up good enough to love him
All over again
Because she believes in him the way Christians believe in God
Asking Him for forgiveness for whatever He deemed as sinful
Praying to him the way he had preyed on her 
Her sun-kissed skin is probably bloody, beaten, and bruised
She is having a hard time forgiving herself
For loving him for too long
She may be really sick
Trying to starve his memory out of her body
Throwing up his smile, his laugh, his eyes
The way he kissed her
And the way he touched her
How his heart felt when she laid her cheek against his hollow chest
How he held her heart in his palm and crushed it like paper
Please find her before he does again
She will consume him like the body of Christ on First Sundays
Swallow his "I missed you" and "Damn you still look good" 
And ask him, "God, why have you forsaken me?" 
She will smell the other women on him
And still be convinced that hers is still the strongest
Tell herself that he came back again because he loved her
Not that he just doesn't have his shit together
She will want to help him because
This is what she defines love as
No one has ever told her she can't help somebody who is that broken
She is probably waiting at a bus stop
Convinced that he is just running a little late this time
But he will come the way he came so many times before
She thinks she has that kind of effect on him
Or she is probably sitting in a cafe
Writing him into her poetry again
Because she knows he hates what she has to say about him
And he will come find her and tell her just that
Or she is running from him again
Because he embarrassed her again
Said that he loved her again
Pulled her into a hug again
Kissed her again
Made love to her again
But she found him singing the same song to someone else again
And told her "I think we should end this" again
Because he doesn't want to hurt her again
Because he cares too much about her again
But this isn't healthy for either one of them again
She has so many tattooed scars on her body
She won't even look at herself in the mirror anymore
Her eyes are probably so full of water
She'll want to drown in her tears tonight 
Like she did last night
And last week
And last month
And last year
All she does is cry at the moon and wonder
Why did he choose to do this to her
If I still know her as well as I did
I am certain she is sitting on the steps of a church
Trying to baptize herself into poetry
So that all of what she knew washes away.

If you find her, please tell her that I miss her.

Once Upon A Dream

I used to dream of midnights in Paris
a large bay window overlooking the Seine River
lying in white bed sheets staring at the city lights
and of course my Black King and I
basking in the sanctity of our love
We would be magic.

Now I dream of dark alleyways 
and tainted bed sheets of betrayal
I am but a beggar in rain
asking for my things back
glaring into his eyes
as he smiles into hers.

At First Sight

I looked at him the way one looks at art--
first taken aback, then mesmerized
by his lines in his bare back
and the way his deep brown skin glistened
as the sun kissed him
the way I wanted to--
soft and gentle
he was my kind of poetry
the kind you read over chai tea and milk
on a rainy Sunday afternoon
the kind that tugs at your soul
and you lose yourself for a moment
I wanted to stay lost in him
for as long as I could
He was a beautiful masterpiece.

Hiatus!

Hi, Readers!

Writer's block is something serious this time around, so I've decided to (obviously) take a writing hiatus and refocus my energy. This upcoming fall I'll be transferring to Rutgers for the remainder of my college experience and starting my Africana Studies minor (yay!). During this time I want to catch up on my reading, specifically by writers of color and even more specifically women. I'm looking for more material to write about. Lately I've been so inspired by these Black women I've stumbled upon, and I am in such awe when I read their work. Right now I'm trying to get my hands on Toni Morrison's new novel, God Help the Child. She's one of my favorite writers, and I've heard this one is really good. I also plan on rereading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I was only a junior in high school when I first read it, so I think I'll appreciate more now. 

A good writer is an avid reader! Find a good book and try to read a couple of pages a night.

--Jay

Unrequited

Under a lone streetlight
I stood as rain drenched my entire body
my hands outstretched with my heart in them
tears falling relentlessly
as you walked ahead of me
your arm draped around her neck
a kiss placed against her forehead
All I ever wanted was to love.