Author: Lashanda

Through Love.

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You watch lovers hold hands,
but you do not see the subtle thumb caress, 
the electricity between their shoulders, 
the stolen glances of knowing among two.

You listen to someone speak of their person,
seemingly over-the-top professions of love,
but you do not hear the song in their head when this person is around,
the bells and harmonies, 
the ringing and pulsating,
the energy of the other
in the air. 

To view love as an outsider,
is like asking a poet to write with no muse,
like asking someone to experience joy for you. 

To be in love,
is to be fulfilled from the scraps of mortality,
for the everyday to become highly personal,
to move through life,
through love.

It Isn’t Just Me Anymore.

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Solitude is comfort.
Sitting inside my heart, knowing it is just me to look out for,
has a level of safety, of solace,
of relief.
I know my requirements and tend to them endlessly.

But now there’s you.
you.
You have a space carved out inside my heart,
with flashes of your strong hands and soft eyes,
every squeal of joy,
the tightness in my cheeks,
our supple hearts fleshed as one.

But it’s not just me anymore.

Many years of solitude have made rusted the spaces in my heart meant for another.
I am habitually engulfed in a sense of seclusion.
And for a moment I believe again that it is just me,
as it always has been.

And then you press against my hearts’ walls,
your presence juiced into my veins,
coating every corner,
and I remember you are here.
you.
In all your gentle glory,
inside my head and by my side and in my heart,
enveloping me.

It isn’t just me anymore.
And what an honour it is that it’s you.

You.

Don’t Tell Me You Always Knew.

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The idea
of men,
of manhood,
the way it tasted in my mouth,
gagging
on my pitiful fortuned future,
one where a man
with a hairy chest and no room in it for me,
was what to desire,
so I learned to choke back my own,
believing a life without love,
a throat full of thirst,
was my white flag. 

So don’t tell me you always knew,
because for a long time I didn’t. 
I held in my mouth the dripping inkling
that i was meant for a woman all along. 
But the delectable nectar,
the joyous certainty, 
was far too sweet to spit out. 

Queries from the Sky.

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Does time work against you? Is it time that slowly devours your flesh, ages your skin, shrinks your brain? Is time the silent killer, the morbid pessimist, the reality check that you are far from indesctructible? Are you ok with that, an immovable force dictating you? 

-Saturn 

Shelf Stable

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My love is shelf stable.
My heart is best before sealed,
for an infinite future.

The apparent stagnation 
is really the exaltation of immortality,
the way a feeling can remain at its prime until necessary,
the bounty firm against the cheek,

waiting.

Waiting for an undetermined moment where the seal breaks,
where the sand begins to bead down the glass, 
where you are no longer inexahasutible,
and must succumb to the laws of nature,
to let bacteria consume you and your love
in slow increments. 

My love, although seemingly infinite before breakage, becomes volatile once breached. 
Who will break the seal and render me perishable? 

Things Unsullied.

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The eyes you have,
when you experience change,
wet like a newborn animal,
darting and buzzing as they move through the nameless, 

versus the eyes you have looking at familiarity, 
glossing over similarity,
running the same current over and over,
until there are no more sparks.

What happens between those sets of eyes?
When does it die, the wonderment?