salt.
Copyright © 2013 Nayyirah Waheed
All rights reserved.
ISBN 10: 1492238287
ISBN-13: 978-1492238287
it was only and ever love.
for us
iyo. nchele. sira. muối. lonu. pa’akai. cho. masima. ama. wardan. ityuwa. noon. salila. munya. zede´. chewa. mith. nnu. lobon. hapi. letswai. juky. milh. sogum. mongwa. uppu. saahl. cusbo. îunkyre. tisnt. lun. nkyen. ambel. namak. gishiri. asin. chumvi. sohgoom. iam. malga. yim. loon. mungwa. shio. uyah. zhiiwitaagan. îukyra. gleua. isawudo. ta’ab. labana. meleh. ntsev. hoh-rum. aymara. nkyini. yán. tswayi. sotoe. nun. chumbí. garam. disel. nkyene. lu-nu. melh. tsira. nimak. sogidda. iztapinolli. loonh. muño. umuchene. mithu. kashi. nkyene. melach. lon. agh. krip alati. tuz. sél. marili. suola. sol. sare. súl. sare. só. sil. halen. zout. salann. druska. salz. so. sale. sel. sal. salt.
CONTENTS
salt
water
clings to my
wrists.
it has been
my fragrance
since birth.
i am always writing
of you.
for you.
–– breath | my people
can we speak in flowers.
it will be easier for me to understand.
–– other language
the morning is younger than you.
but
you will always be more tender.
–– age
you broke the ocean in
half to be here.
only to meet nothing that wants you.
–– immigrant
cruel mothers are still mothers.
they make us wars.
they make us revolution.
they teach us the truth. early.
mothers are humans. who
sometimes give birth to their pain. instead of children.
–– hate
sometimes
there is more water
in a poem
than in the sea.
––––––––––––––––––––––––
three waves
wash their way
into my hand.
they are the water in this poem.
what
massacre
happens to my son
between
him
living within my skin.
drinking my cells.
my water.
my organs.
and
his soft psyche turning cruel.
does he not remember
he
is half woman.
–– from
the hard season
will
split you through.
do not worry.
you will bleed water.
do not worry.
this is grief.
your face will fall out and down your skin
and
there will be scorching.
but do not worry.
keep speaking the years from their hiding places.
keep coughing up smoke from all the deaths you have
died.
keep the rage tender.
because the soft season will come.
it will come.
loud.
ready.
gulping.
both hands in your chest.
up all night.
up all of the nights.
to drink all damage into love.
–– therapy
trust your work.
would
you still want to travel to
that
country
if
you could not take a camera with you.
–– a question of appropriation
flower work
is
not easy.
remaining
soft in fire
takes
time.
when your mother unbirths you
because
she smells swans in your skin
it feels like
she is
singing in salt.
and
her eyes carve you out of her body.
you
are a dream
undreamt.
and
this is a holocaust
that
winter birds
will
never know.
–– swans
black women breathe flowers, too.
just because
we are taught to grow them in the lining of our quiet (our
grandmothers secret)
does not mean
we do not swelter with wild tenderness.
we petal.
we scent limbs.
love.
we just have been too long a garden for sharp and deadly
teeth.
so we
have
grown
ourselves
into
greenhouses.
–– greenhouses
i knew you
before
i met you.
i’ve known you my whole life.
–– nafsi
she asked
‘you are in love
what does love look like’
to which i replied
‘like everything i’ve ever lost
come back to me.’
when you are
here
everything
is
wild.
–– moon
are your eyes blushing ?
even the small poems mean something. they are often
whales in the bodies of tiny fish.
there
are
feelings.
you haven’t felt yet.
give them time.
they are almost here.
–– fresh
his back
was a hundred stories
he
wanted to tell me.
a hundred lives
he
wanted to live together.
–– muscle (how many hours i spent reading his skin)
i am such
a
sensitive summer thing.
when you are struggling
in your
writing (art).
it usually means
you
are hearing one thing.
but
writing (creating) another.
–– honest | risk
i found flaws
and
they were beautiful.
–– ugly
take the art.
slice it from their skin.
leave the color behind.
–– flower crowns and bob marley t-shirts
my heart is in my mind. i think this is why i am an artist.
i bleed
every month.
but
do not die.
how am i
not
magic.
–– the lie
i will crawl for white beauty.
eat my arms.
barter my legs (make my thighs into altars of grief).
for
skin that does not drink night.
hair that is not angry.
body that is not soil.
i place curses on my flesh
call them diets.
tell my ancestors
they are ugly.
howl at my nose until it bleeds.
run my heart across my teeth, repeatedly.
i am dying.
to be
beautiful.
but
beautiful.
is
something.
i
will never
be.
–– by the time we are seven
where
you are.
is not
who
you are.
–– circumstances
i am a child of three countries.
the water.
the heat.
the words.
lay down.
let me put your flowers on.
–– fall
both.
i want to stay.
i want to leave.
i am three oceans away from my soul.
–– lost
i lied.
i told you i was not afraid to love you. then i walked away.
and
loved you.
–– i have spent my whole life alone. loving you | when we choose fear
i am your friend.
a soul for your soul.
home.
know this.
sun or water.
here
or
away.
we are a lighthouse.
we leave.
and
we stay.
–– lighthouse
she was the color of evening husk
and salt.
i wore my voice with her sometimes
my fragrance
others.
she was a beautiful place to bare my legs.
night my countries.
and
eat the hot winter.
–– thaw
if i write
what you may feel
but can not say.
it does not
make
me a poet.
it makes me a bridge.
and
i am humbled
and
i am grateful
to assist your heart in speaking.
–– grateful
expect sadness
like
you expect rain.
both
cleanse you.
–– natural
african american women are easy. inferior.
africans are dirty. jungle people.
african americans are lazy. indolent.
african people are too black. ugly.
african americans think they are better than us.
africans think they are better us.
–– listen to the sound of us | we are breaking our mothers heart | the ancestors weep at how much we look like the hate that came to eat us
sit in the ocean.
it is one of the best medicines
on the planet.
–– the water
if we must
both
be right.
we will
lose
each other.
–– exile
he was so beautiful
because
when he held her
he was not concerned with ‘being a man.’
‘being a man’
had nothing to do with this.
these flowers pouring from his chest.
–– weightless
we are never our own.
we must change this fact.
–– acceptance
i wake
to you everywhere.
yet
you are not here.
–– reach
my english is broken.
on purpose.
you
have to try harder to understand
me.
breaking this language
you so love
is my pleasure.
in your arrogance
you presume that i want your skinny language.
that my mouth is building a room for
it
in the back of my throat
it is not.
–– i have seven different words for love. you have only one. that makes a lot of sense.
i don’t pay attention to the
world ending.
it has ended for me
many times
and began again in the morning.
the idea of a second heart.
i want more ‘men’
with flowers falling from their skin.
more water in their eyes.
more tremble in their bodies.
more women in their hearts
than
on their hands.
more softness in their height.
more honesty in their voice.
more wonder.
more humility in their feet.
–– less
you tell me
‘burn yourself white, it will make me happy.’
my sadness
is sharpening itself against my teeth.
you are the color of soft coal.
and
just got back from visiting your mother in last nigeria
month.
you say ‘look baby, look, what i brought back for you.’
i move out.
.
lunch with your sister is slightly trembling.
you want to touch her opening cheek with your hurt.
she won’t really look at you.
it is better not to talk.
no words can put out the pale fire spreading across her
face.
.
you are sore from all of the white women in magazines.
coaxing you out of your skin.
their fragrance is all over your friends
at school.
you can smell it.
the heat of whiteness on their necks.
‘maybe,’
as your hands.
brush pain and relief into your face.
‘maybe, now’
you say,
‘the world will leave me alone.’
–– bleach
if your light falls out of your mouth
pick it up.
(and
put it back)
–– noor
you
will drown
if
you do not have boundaries.
they
are
not optional.
this structure
counts
on your inability
to
say
no.
mean no.
they take no
from
our
first breath.
go back
and
return it to your mouth.
your heart.
your light.
–– swim | women of color
you
see your face.
you
see a flaw.
how. if you are the only one who has this face.
–– the beauty construct
white people are not chinese.
because they are born/live in china.
white people are not indian.
because they are born/live in india.
white people are not african.
because they are born/live on a continent they murdered
their way into.
–– there is no such thing as a white african | colonial blood myths | a revisionist history
i am often broken into language.
whether i want to
speak or not.
i am simply the poet.
the
poem
is
the one
that
can change your life.
–– medium
is there a place
in the
community.
for
those who leave.
but
never leave (you).
–– ex
i am the line.
on both sides there are songs
in my name.
–– bi
the rain in this room
is low and thick
and
undressing my heart
through the air.
–– intimacy
stay soft. it looks beautiful on you.
i could just simply say
i want you
and
leave my mouth in your hand.
we lay
in our country.
love makes us a homeland.
–– bed
i am a brutally soft woman.
with
the water bowl balancing
on my thighs
i soak the flowers
until
they become words.
then i write.
–– the ritual
she washes the sea
on her knees.
–– salt
i am a black wave
in
a white sea.
always seen
and
unseen.
–– the difference
what will your eyes do with me
when they are done.
will they lay me
in the tender flesh behind
the sun.
fold me into
your memory’s back.
keep me
a
running
water down your arms.
–– where