feat. Frank Ocean
Saturdays involved making out entrances into life outside / we’ve been in this room too long / recreation is keeping us self-contained and aware / of each other’s form
Another love becomes ghost & that’s cliché but true Her hair scattered across my bathroom, bedroom floors. Door the shape of her frame, voice echoing in my blood chambers A body not yet full is easily consumed a body not yet full is a question good reason for leaving I am to blame She more fleeting than I’d like for her to be brief history we loved once and that became a fog filled night loud silence once we asked what if, question becoming spell sweet ghost haunting the halls of my lonely, whispering of all I deserve while naming me an unworthy beast.
Son who leave / the son who leaves
a weighted sky calls my mother to prayer /her/ near God listening amongst the noise my body covered in Christian magic saved despite – I, a BOI once her pink miracle given /her/ name & wishing well of a tongue, I pray – to be poured into the body she didn’t choose for me sweet Black son hiding in the shadow of himself, once – a scripture tumbled from my soft lips & I awoke the next morning with my father’s face wide grin /his/ boyish charm, the woman asleep next to me nothing like my mother / her/ hardened spine faithfulness, instead a graceless woman calls me hers & forgets to add temporarily I stay listen closely to the whistling pines find my mother in a field weeping among them & when I bring /her/ face close to mine she says come home come home though I never left, I point to the sun and whisper I’ve always been close so close
And rewind it back one more / the tape stopped before I was back alone
If I had the crown of a peacock I could ward off every predator all the ill-intentioned loves knocking at the front door the I in my BOI loves so badly sometimes I mean I love myself most times I am just strange I love just as my mother taught me with the faith of a mustard seed I mean I trusted the metaphor, that faith and prayer could yield a vast love, a last love –all my BOIshness cradled in her midnight sky eyes –
And had this been the past I might not know / What to do with all / of what you've showed What you give, my words can’t hold /
every way we fall short and keep running into a sun set far more beautiful than the story we could tell and yes, we all try we do – to give, to receive.
MARS is a writer and cultural organizer born and raised in Detroit, MI. Their work has been published in the Lambda Literary Art anthology Emerge, Foglifter Journal, Gertrude Press, The Shade Journal, and elsewhere. MARS is a 2021 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow and a 2019 Lambda Literary Art Emerging Writers Fellow in Poetry. They work as the Director of the Allied Media Conference.