Love like a plan gone wrong
Today I woke up and decided to be beautiful
Everyday feels like a song in my head
Looking to escape
Words rushing out of mouth
I like the wanting as it comes to me – hurried, unfinished, hesitant
This morning, I smoked another cigarette
Lungs charred, legs splayed open
Your fingers feel like veins popping
Across my forehead
Tracing maps of lands
I’ll only visit in the dreams I forget to remember

*

Muslim women don’t make love
Garters don’t hug our thighs
Suggestions under our hijabs
I like to get my pussy licked a lot but nobody seems to lick it right
I tell you how your tongue should move
Circular, soft like slow motion autumn leaves turning tricks on the tarmac
My mother taught me to hug frail boys when they sleep
My body turns itself inside out,
I hug myself and I dare let my thumb rest against your crown

*

You only ever cared about building a life
Brick and mortar, rent paid on time, change your furniture every season
Life was daily domestic chores interrupted by a smoke and a kiss
The girl with the whiter skin, limbs slender and sturdy
Arms wrapped around herself like leaves drooping
Quietly, begging for care
We sleep with our backs turned to each other
Weary;
We’ve run out of fingers to count our moments together

*

Cold medicine trickling down the back of my throat, you tell me I’m beautiful
On most days, I can’t bear to look in the mirror
Thirty squats, three reps of each
Suck your stomach in, get your push-up bra on,
Line the brows, shimmer at the side of my mouth
Where your tongue barely grazes as it finds its
Landing strip
Pun intended, I swallow up the looks hungrily
So unattractive in my naked need