Sporadic earthquakes and 300 days of fogs that suffocate the sunshine right out of smile
I thought I would always resent it for this.
While preparing to board an outgoing plane for the third time since I met him,
I realized that this was not the case.
It is never the weather that makes a city.
Rarely the events,
sometimes the history,
but always, always, the people.
I fell in love with San Francisco round late 2011
immediately following what my friends deemed “the end of the world”
but could more accurately be described as a tremor.
Still…
I liked the way it moved me.
I like the idea that something outside of my peripheral could shake me.
I like the night we met,
I like the fact that I was facing the entrance of café
and didn’t even see him come in.
I love how mundane that night could have been
but still…
I liked the way it moved me.
Some days when you texts me,
I find myself sitting in my doorway for comfort.
This is where you wait when you're waiting for an earthquake.
Before an earthquake,
snakes have been know to straighten their spine
and remain erect
birds fly wildly,
fish swim the marine internationally to find a safe location
Dogs barking at thin air,
My hair standing on it’s hind legs.
My body has been in a constant quiver
My bones don’t move in predictable ways
My hands twitch inexplicably
I’ve been finding fault lines in my hips since I met him
I gotta be honest,
I dream of your last name.
El Henson
Wake up with his first trembled
against my lips
reverberating…
like a song.
Like a flower’s vibration just before bloom,
like the earth trembling before it opens.
It shakes my whole body.
There are rumors,
of the next largest earthquake in San Francisco since 1906
and I am positive
you will have something to do with that.
You exist in earth quaking prose.
Show up in my dreams like you pay rent,
No permission,
no permit,
just loving brute force.
My walls shiver like Jericho,
the tomb stone murmurs it’s exit against the gravel.
My body convulses against your intentionally destructive hands,
the same hands that remind me there is no rebirth without causalities.
You are so deliberate with my resurrection,
invested in my release,
in my pleasure,
in the quiver of steady hands,
hovering breaths,
ricocheting bedsposts,
in tidal waves.
I do wonder if a tsunamie could quench that thumping thirst of yours
but we are not meant to wonder,
we are made to do,
designed to live
so if you ever find yourself of primordial waters with nothing to paddle but your tongue
you will know who sent you,
because it’s this twitching in my lower back that’s got me writing in fault lines,
it’s this ritcher scale in my throat that’s got me craving a 7.0
so taste me
Until my parted lips tongue you back
Until we learn the method
of sub-tectonic plates.
There is a scientific method to our love
as undoubtable as gravity,
Newton’s third law,
a2+b2=c2 just like you+me=meant to be
and I know it’s corny,
a little too cheesy for most people’s taste,
but I wasn’t looking to appeal to their appetite
Baby, you’re the only one I want hungry for me.
I am familiar with the way you make my bones quake
but I have never seen an earthquake hold anything like the way you hold a sunrise
or blanket the dusk
with outstretched arms
and a curved smile.
You are Kemet’s finest,
heaven’s hope,
everything Heather Headly claimed He Is,
what Jill Scott only WISH she had
“The Truth” as described by India Arie.
You are…if I could in a word…breathtaking.
I’ve been called a love poet,
despite the fact that I’ve never written a love poem,
just vindictive poems about the men that I love
because when they miscalculate where I’ll land
or refuse to catch me,
I don’t know want there to be proof that I fell for it,
because I fell for you
and I apologize Denver,
you will always be my first love
But I am 1,000 miles away from the nearest earthquake
and my lower back is still craving the quiver.
I miss his golden skies,
the timber in his voice,
the roughness of his hands,
I miss his touch.
I would never be caught missing a city for it’s weather
but I would give anything,
just to feel a tremor.