the live oak where the sparrow once sang
and my love pressed into my side body
Holding me with practiced tenderness
snaggletoothed charmer, angel reading
three books in one sitting
I want to tell her of the years before,
the long, dense ones that were blue
as the sea and tasted of soot
the years spent hoping for what I wanted
and getting nothing in return
when loneliness was not an ache
but a pulse that I could touch
because it lived between my bones.
If you want it, you have to ask for it she says
And it’s true, so I tell her what I want
and she gives it back to me achingly
for hours, for miles
there is no one but us
᠅
India Moore is a lesbian poet, fiction writer, and fibre arts enthusiast from the South. She writes stories of Black girlhood, family, grief and love. India lives in Chicago and calls North Carolina home. @india.anyai