Untitled ii | Kamal Tomlin

The sun’s throat is red and parched;

It laps at the droplets left from concrete geysers,

Its tears iridescent.

reminiscent of mercury.

and in its desperation

Its beauty feels almost like perjury.

Untitled:

You had names for everything.

I’d watch you scrawl them on

The skin of your palms, between the creases of your lips,

On the back of my tongue and the roof of your mouth.

But

You didn’t know what to name my hair

called the strands that had wrapped themselves

around your fingers braids.

Twists; I told you, while the sharp lines of

our skin pushed against each other

on the doors of the A train.

We unraveled the next summer

After you asked me if I

Wanted to swim in the space

where Central Park used to be.

I told you if my cornrows were to soak,

they would shrink and frizz,

And that the parts you loved about me

Would grow fuzzy just the same.

I didn’t tell you that I never learned

To keep my head afloat in the absence of noise,

That I was scared of what a lungful of static

Would feel like in my chest.

Static is what my afro would have reminded you of

What you would’ve named it

Before you turned gray.